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THE ROMANCE OF 
THE WORLD'S FISHERIES 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/romanceofworldsfOOwrig 




A Dreaded Catch 



The conger eel js a dangerous fish on board a small boat. If it once gets a hold of 
a man's leg, it is impossible to make it disengage its teeth. Even when its head is cut 
off, its mouth must be prised open. 



THE ROMANCE OF 
THE WORLD'S FISHERIES 

INTERESTING DESCRIPTIONS OF 

THE MANY & CURIOUS METHODS 

OF FISHING IN ALL PARTS OF 

THE WORLD 



BY 

SIDNEY WRIGHT 



WITH TWENTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS 



PHILADELPHIA 
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 

LONDON: SEELEY & CO. Limited 
1908 



<y 



&' 



Printed in Great Britain 



6? 



ii 



PREFACE 

IN an account of the world's fisheries it is impossible 
to use the word " fish " only in its strictly scientific 
meaning; for what are everywhere known as "fish- 
eries " include the taking of many creatures which are not 
really fish, Whaling, sealing, turtle-catching, and pearl- 
diving must necessarily have a place in the following 
pages. 

Little attempt has been made to treat the subject from 
the commercial or industrial point of view. The author 
has rather endeavoured to give an animated picture of 
the fisherman's life, of his methods, his hardships and 
adventures, his disappointments, and his hardly won 
successes. The best authorities have been consulted, but 
many of the details are drawn from the author's own 
experience. 



PAGE 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTORY 

Fishing- an occupation to which uncivilised man would naturally 
turn — Seasons and preferences — Other products of the sea 
besides fish — A few words on fishing from a historical point 
of view . . . . ... 17 

CHAPTER II 

THE FISHERMAN'S TOOLS 

Various means of obtaining fish — The push-net — Rod and line — 
Bait — Means of getting nearer to the fish — The raft — The 
open boat — The smack — Tackle used in boat-fishing — Long 
lines and hand lines — Trawls, drift-nets, seines, moored nets, 
and dredges — Pots — Another important item : experience — 
The fascination of the fisherman's calling . 22 

CHAPTER III 

TRAWLING 

"Off" with the boats — The start — The fisherman's attitude 
towards strangers — An East Coast trawler — The net — The 
fisherman at sea — Shooting the trawl — Special "catches" — 
The net hauled up — Where the hard work comes in — The 
steam carrier — What is done with the catch — Steam-trawling 
— Little private ventures . . ... 30 

CHAPTER IV 

SHRIMPING, MUSSELLING, AND LINE-FISHING 

Shrimps — The push-net — On board a Dutch visschers-boot — 
Dutch fishermen — Preparations for boiling — Hauling up the 
shrimp-net — Emptying — The catch — Sorting — 'Ware crabs ! 
— And fox-fish — Boiling — Hot shrimps — Danger of the trade — 
Prawns and prawn-catching — Mussels — What becomes of 

9 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

them all — Transplanting — Mussels by the barge-load — Line- 
fishing — Hand lines — Long lines — Ready-baited hooks — Pay- 
ing out the lines — " Bending-on" — Two or three miles of 
lines — Bringing in the catch — Longer lines — " Butters " . 42 

CHAPTER V 

SALMON-FISHING AS AN INDUSTRY 

The salmon — Annual migration — Jumping — Spawning — Fry, 
smolt, and grilse — The Columbian grounds — Trap-nets — 
Seines — Hauling in by horse-power — The fish-wheel — Salmon- 
fishing among the Indians — Canadian moored gill-nets — 
Scandinavian fishery — The Sogne and' Hardanger fjords — 
Natural salmon-traps — Seines and net-weirs — Lapps and 
Finns as fishers — The sea-swallow — Salmon-netting at home 
— Close time — Stake-nets and stow-nets . • • 59 

CHAPTER VI 

FISHING AS A SPORT 

Angling — Salmon -fishing — Tackle — Ireland and Norway — 
Piscator fit, non nascitur — Casting — A real bite — A long 
spell of hard work — "Sulking" — Gaffing — Fishing in the 
Jotunfeld — High jumpers — To America for sport — The tarpon 
— Tarpon tackle — A nasty sea — A big leap — Towed along — 
Fairly hooked — Sharks ! — Other sport . • • 73 

CHAPTER VII 

THE COD-FISHERY (i) 

The Breton "Icelanders" — Seeing the fleet off — A twelve- 
hundred-mile voyage in a cockle-shell — Life on board — 
Iceland in sight — Cod-fishing — An average catch — A big 
catch in a calm — Cleaning and salting — Breaks in the 
monotony — Homeward bound . . 88 

CHAPTER VIII 

THE COD-FISHERY (il) 

The American cod-fishery — The Newfoundland Banks — Dory 
work — Hand-line fishing — Drawbacks to it — French trawling 
— No piracy allowed — Pulling up the trawl — Clearing and 
rebaiting — Cleaning and drying — The gill-net — Its special 
utility — Its mechanism . . ... 100 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER IX 

THE OYSTER 

PAGE 

Where the oyster is, and is not, found — The Essex and North 
Kent "flats" — Development — Re -stocking the beds — 
"Brood" — A day of a dredger's life — Description of the 
dredge — Hauling up — The oyster's companions in the dredge 
— Its enemies — Measuring up the "wash" — The collecting 
boat — Other kinds of oysters — Typhoid ! . . . 1 1 1 

CHAPTER X 

UNITED STATES FISH AND FISHERMEN 

The States fishermen — The " foreigners" — The spring mackerel- 
fishing — The "purse-seine" — Fishing by night — How the 
net is cleared — Shore-welrs — Line-fishing for mackerel — 
The herring — The mullet — A big catch — The "red snapper" 
— Other American fish . . . . 124 

CHAPTER XI 

THE BRITISH HERRING-FISHERY 

The herring — The lugger — Night-work — Signs! — "Lythe" 
— Shooting the tackle — How the drift-net is worked — The 
trial shot — Shooting a "fleet" — The net filling — Hauling in 
— The first strike— A second shot — More than they can 
carry — "Maze," "cran," and "last" — Getting rid of the 
catch . . . , ... 133 

CHAPTER XII 

FISHING IN THE MEDITERRANEAN 

Possibilities of the Mediterranean fisheries — Migration of the 
anchovy — Shooting the seine for anchovies — The moored 
net — Some of its occupants — The fisherman's friends and 
enemies — Sharks — Saw-fish and sword-fish — The tunny — 
Setting the nets — Slaughtering the catch — Another Sicilian 
industry — Line-fishing . . ... 147 

CHAPTER XIII 

THE PILCHARD— THE STURGEON 

The Cornish fisherman — The pilchard — Shoaling — Drift-nets 
and seines — The "seine-boat" — Shooting the net — The stop- 

II 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



seines — Sharks! — "Tucking" — Taking the fish ashore — 
The factory — The sturgeon — Russian sturgeon and sterlet 
fishing — Isinglass and caviare . . . . 156 

CHAPTER XIV 

THE CATCHING OF LOBSTERS, CRABS, AND WHELKS 

Fish that are caught in pots — The lobster — Colonial fish — The 
Bergen and Christiansund lobster-fishery — Crayfish — Crabs 
— The hermit — Land-crabs — Tropical and fresh-water crabs 
— Crabbing — Whelks — Fishing with "trots" — Whelking as 
a trade— The boats— The pots— The fish . . . 167 

CHAPTER XV 

THE FISHERIES OF THE FAR EAST 

China, Japan, Siam, etc. — A fish-eating people— Fresh-water 
fishing — Chinese angling — Fishing with the help of cormo- 
rants — How the birds are trained — Good and bad divers — 
Two birds to one fish — The dip-net — River-fishing by hand 
— Sea fisheries ; the junk and the lorcha — A Portuguese 
colony — "Archers" and "fighting-fish" — Japan's fisheries — 
The salmon and trout . . . . . 179 

CHAPTER XVI 

SOME REMARKS ON THE IRISH FISHERIES 

Comparative poverty of the western fisheries — Possible reasons 
— Present state of the Irish fisheries— The Irish fisherman — 
Trawling and long-line fishing — Congers, sharks, and sea- 
cats — Trawling on rocky ground — ' ' Man overboard 1 " — Ling, 
halibut, and ray— Eels— Tory Island . . . . 191 

CHAPTER XVII 

SOME STRANGE FISH AND STRANGE FISHERMEN 

Decay of primitive methods— South American fisheries — The 
arapaima — Harpoons and tethered arrows — The armado — 
Catching fish on land — The diodon— Fishing in Tierra del 
Fuego — African river-fishing — The Indian mango-fish — The 
modern Galilean fisherman — South Sea Island fish — Proas 
and Hawaiian "outriggers" — Australian and Arctic fishing 203 

12 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER XVIII 

PEARLS AND PEARL-DIVING 

PAGE 

How pearls grow — Loose and fixed pearls — The fish that contain 
them— The Ceylon Banks — Native divers — The pearl fleet — 
Scene in the Gulf of Manaar— A noisy crew — The "shifts" 
— Method of lowering — Sharks — A curious superstition — 
Landing and piling the oysters — How they open — Varieties 
of pearls — Other grounds — Dredging for pearl-shells — The 
argentine . . . . . . 218 

CHAPTER XIX 

WHALES AND WHALING 

A profitable if risky industry — One or two historical details — 
The home of the whale — Old and new methods of catching 
him — Harpoons — " Blowing" — The whale's trail — Throwing 
the harpoon — A nerve-destroying trade — The tow-line — 
Other shots at the monster — A cut at the tail — The death — 
Cutting up — The whale's enemies — Rorquals and cachalots 
— A modern whaler and its equipment — The harpoon-gun 
and the bomb-lance — A disappointing whale — Various uses 
to which the carcass is devoted — Sperm oil and ambergris . 231 

CHAPTER XX 

HOW SPONGES ARE PROCURED 

What sponge is — Where it grows — Sponge-diving — The un- 
dressed diver — A "dressed" diver at work — His dress — 
The diver on the bottom — Signals — Coming up — Dredging 
for sponges — Awkward gear — Sponge-harpooning — The 
spy-glass — The Adriatic trade — Sponge-culture — Florida 
Keys — Sponge-hooking in the Bahamas . . . 250 

CHAPTER XXI 

DOLPHINS, PORPOISES, AND MANATEES 

The dolphin — Misconceptions about it — Dolphin-catching among 
the Faroe islanders — Fresh- water dolphins : the Inia and 
the Soosoo — The grampus — Porpoises — Fishermen's hatred 
of them — The narwhal — Its tusk — An Iceland narwhal-hunt 
— The Greenlanders' method — The Caaing whale and the 
beluga — Trapping and seining belugas — The dugong and 
the manatee — A manatee-hunt . ... 265 

13 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER XXII 

TURTLES AND TURTLE-CATCHING 

PAGE 

Turtles and tortoises — The terrapin or snapper — Catching 
turtles with fish — The remora — Shooting with tethered 
arrows — Turtle-diving — Tortoise-shell — A horrible method 
of obtaining it — The hawk's-bill — Its shell — Seining for 
turtles in South America — The Galapagos tortoise — The 
green turtle — Method of taking him . ... 284 

CHAPTER XXIII 

AFTER THE SEAL AND THE WALRUS 

The pinnipeds — The seals and their young — Seal-hunting 
among the Eskimos — The seal as a fighter — The Eskimos' 
summer season — Varieties of seals — Sealing among civilised 
fleets — Methods — Dangers of the work — A seal-massacre — 
How the seal-colonies are founded — Sea-elephants, sea-lions, 
and sea-bears — The walrus — His enemies — A big catch — 
Modern methods of walrus-hunting . ... 297 



H 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

A Dreaded Catch . . . . Frontispiece 

PAGE 

A Great Catch of Mackerel, Lowestoft . 28 

Gutting the Fish on board a Danish Banks Trawler . 39 

The Mussel-Baiters . . ... 54 

Netting Salmon from Colombia River, Oregon, U.S.A. 62 

Salmon-Netting in Norway . . ... 68 

Salmon-Fishing for Pleasure in a Highland River . 74 

Fishermen laying out Herring for sale at Lowestoft 134 

Estimating a Catch of Herring in Norway . . .138 

Herring-Driving in Norway . . . 144 

Pilchard-Fishing . . . . . . 158 

Fishing with Cormorants in China . . . 182 

Fishing in Japan . . . . . . 188 

Fishing on the Nile . . . . . 210 

A Spider's Web as a Fishing-Net . ... 214 

Eskimos Spearing Fish . . . , 216 

Boats waiting near the Guardship at the Ceylon 

Pearl Fisheries . . ... 220 

A Group of Ceylon Pearl Divers . ... 228 

i5 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Harpooning a Sperm Whale 

Severing a Whale's Vertebral Column 

Hauling up a Sponge-Diver . 

Dolphin-Hunting 

Turtle-Fishing 

An Eskimo Method of Seal-Fishing . 



PAGE 

• 236 

. 24O 

• 256 
. 268 
. 290 

. 3°o 



16 



THE EOMANCE OF THE 
WOELD'S FISHEEIES 



CHAPTER I 
INTRODUCTORY 

Fishing an occupation to which uncivilised man would naturally turn 
— Seasons and preferences — Other products of the sea besides fish 
— A few words on fishing from an historical point of view. 

THE catching of fish is an occupation which must 
have arisen at a very early stage in the history of 
the human race ; for man's staple food is necessarily 
decided by his surroundings, and it was as natural for 
a maritime people to look to the sea as its provider, as 
it was for forest inhabitants to sustain life on the fruit 
of trees or the flesh of birds and beasts. Early man 
could not, or would not, cultivate the soil; therefore he 
must either content himself with food that cost him 
little or no trouble to obtain — vegetable products that 
did not call for cultivation, eggs, or shell-fish that lay on 
the shore — or else he must combine business with pleasure 
by obeying his instinct to hunt ; by living on fish, flesh, 
or fowl, the procuring of which had a seasoning of chance, 
b 17 



INTRODUCTORY 

or excitement, or danger in it. Often the land monster 
or the sea monster seemed to threaten him with death 
whether he hunted it or no ; therefore he felt driven to 
slay it in self-defence ; and, when slain, what was more 
natural than that its flesh should be eaten and its non- 
edible parts utilised as clothing, ornament, tool, or 
weapon ? 

v When our fathers had learned the art of making and 
managing rafts or boats, they found that many fish which 
could not be obtained in shallow water might easily be 
caught at some distance from the shore. The appliances 
>r catching them — 'baited hooks, nets, and baskets made 
( l skin or fibre or twigs — would suggest themselves, 
necessity being the mother of invention. 

Then, as agriculture and the mechanical arts developed, 
it became the business of those who still refused to follow 
a land trade, to sell or barter the fish which they did not 
need to people who had not the time or the inclination 
to procure such food for themselves. And it was in this 
way that an industry began which, to-day in many 
countries, ranks in importance with agriculture, and often 
with manufactures. 

By observation the fisherman or the fish-eater gradually 
learned that at one time of the year certain fish were more 
palatable or more plentiful than at another ; that during 
some months shell-fish, for example, were nutritious, 
during others poisonous ; thus the " season " for any 
special fish became recognised and defined. As the con- 
sumer's palate grew more discriminating, one fish was 
found to be richer in taste than another ; and so creatures 



INTRODUCTORY 

like the turbot, the sole, and the oyster were ruthlessly 
and greedily pursued, to the partial neglect of, say, the 
humbler herring and skate, which continued to increase 
and multiply, commanding but a poor market-price in 
comparison with their scarcer and more succulent brethren. 
Thus to-day the fishmonger who can afford to sell a 
herring for a halfpenny must charge a shilling for 
a sole. 

From the further cultivation of arts and crafts, the 
man of the coast realised at length that fish had other 
profitable uses than those of the table ; from increased 
knowledge of navigation, from experiments in diving, 
and from watching the beach at low tide, he learned that 
the sea had other saleable commodities to offer besides 
fish in the strict sense. For ages he had adorned himself 
and his family with sealskin, sharks 1 teeth, shells, coral ; 
had converted fish-bones into knives and war-hatchets 
and needles and hooks ; had collected cowries for his 
currency, and amber to conjure with ; and perhaps it 
was not such a very wide step thence to the preserving 
and utilising of fish skins and oil, or to a systematic 
search for — and regular trade in — pearls, whalebone, 
sponge, or the purple dye secreted within the shell of 
the Tyrian murex. 

From the time that the fisheries became once firmly 
established as a recognised industry, there is not a great 
deal to be said as to the history of their development. 
Probably the reason for this is that, unlike most trades, 
fishing does not easily lend itself to improvements and 
new fashions. The fisherman thinks that what was good 

19 



INTRODUCTORY 

enough for his father is good enough for him. Companies 
may have taken the trade out of the hands of indi- 
viduals ; steam-vessels may have ousted some of the 
old smacks ; but methods and implements generally 
have undergone but little alteration even in a couple 
of thousand years ; a net or a dredge or a pot or an 
enclosure is now what it was then. The few important 
modifications or improvements in gear will be dealt 
with presently. 

Nor has political history much to tell us about the 
fisheries that would be of general interest. Henry I of 
England is supposed to have regarded the sturgeon as his 
exclusive property ; and we know that the salmon forms 
the subject of a clause in Magna Charta. It is generally 
believed that Biscayan whalers as far back as the fourteenth 
century fished off' the coast of what is now called New- 
foundland, and even off Greenland and Spitzbergen. 
The Portuguese instituted the Grand Banks cod-fishery 
in the year 1500. In the time of Charles II, the British 
fisheries had so declined that the King, in 1662, offered 
£200 to every man who would fit out a " brisse," or Dutch 
herring-smack, within six months from the date of his 
proclamation. 

Fishing-grounds have, of course, formed the subject of 
disputes between countries. In 1839 a treaty was signed 
between England and France to settle the exact boundaries 
of the oyster, and other, grounds, to which both nations 
laid claim ; and in 1854 a similar agreement was drawn 
up between our Government and that of the United States, 
relating to the Canadian fisheries. 

20 



INTRODUCTOEY 

It is only within comparatively recent years that any 
serious step has been taken by Government to fix a close 
season for fish. At the present time our fisheries are 
under the control of local committees appointed by the 
Board of Trade. 



21 



CHAPTER II 
THE FISHERMAN'S TOOLS 

Various means of obtaining fish — The push-net — Rod and line — Bait 
— Means of getting nearer to the fish — The raft — The open boat — 
The smack — Tackle used in boat-fishing — Long lines and hand 
lines — Trawls — drift-nets, seines, moored nets, and dredges — Pots 
— Another important item : experience — The fascination of the 
fisherman's calling. 

BEFORE dealing with special fisheries it may be 
well to give a brief description in outline of the 
" plant," so to speak, which constitutes the fisher- 
man's capital ; the means most generally in use for trans- 
porting the fish from their home in the sea or river 
to the storehouse or the market. Less commonly used 
appliances will receive separate mention later. 

Obviously the simplest method of procuring fish is by 
picking them off the beach at low water. It is in this 
way that millions of cockles, mussels, and periwinkles 
are obtained every year; in many parts of the world 
oysters are obtained in the same way. Such creatures 
as these offer no resistance ; make no attempt to escape 
their captors ; but as soon as we come to the more lively 
fish that may be caught at low tide or in very shallow 
water — shrimps, for instance — some mechanical con- 
trivance for securing them at once becomes necessary. 



THE FISHERMAN'S TOOLS 

In the case of shrimps, this takes the form of the push- 
net, with the sight of which we are all familiar — a simple 
net-bag, kept open by a wooden framework to which a 
long pole is fastened. 

The ordinary vertebrate fish, whether of the sea or the 
river, may also be caught from the land ; but, as every- 
body knows, he is too timid or too wary to allow himself 
to be beguiled by other than artificial means more or less 
elaborate. From the banks of rivers and lakes, or from 
jetties and pier-heads, opportunities for large catches are 
rare ; wherefore it is better to try patiently to secure the fish 
singly. This is done by means of a hook, usually barbed, 
fastened to a line long enough to reach that part of the 
water — surface, middle, or bottom — where the fish angled 
• for is likely to be found. In fishing at any appreciable 
distance from the bank, the line is suspended over the 
water from the tip of a long rod which scarcely calls 
for minute description. To entice the fish, some bait, 
natural or artificial, living or dead, which will appeal 
to his curiosity or greed, is fixed to the hook, generally 
in such a manner as partially to conceal it. This bait 
varies according to the fish sought and the depth at 
which he swims : broadly speaking, for angling at or near 
the surface, imitation flies are used ; for mid- water 
angling, real or sham fish ; for fishing near the bottom, 
dough, worms, or gentles (the larvae obtained from fly- 
blown meat). 

To these methods "land" fishing may be said to be 
mainly confined ; and we pass on to the consideration of 
the more important branch, which presses into its service 

23 



THE FISHERMAN'S TOOLS 

not only nets and lines, but also a means of getting at 
somewhat closer quarters with those fish which cannot be 
caught very near to the shore — boats and ships. 

The raft, the rudest type of water conveyance, is now, 
except by some of the Japanese and Chinese fishermen, 
used only by savages and boys. It has no particular 
shape or construction, and often no means of steering. 
It is said that the Phoenicians, who colonised Corsica and 
other islands near Italy, had no better craft in which to 
reach their destination ; if so, the journey must have 
been a work of time and patience. 

The open boat, the shape of which varies only triflingly 
in different parts of the world, comes next. Being of such 
light build and not affording much storage accommoda- 
tion, one often thinks of it as merely an accessory to 
larger fishing-boats ; yet on most coasts it is to be found 
used independently ; and, for certain kinds of work — line- 
fishing, crabbing, etc. — it has a world-wide popularity. 
It draws so little water that it can be safely used where 
larger boats would go aground or strike the rocks ; often 
its very lightness is its strongest recommendation ; for, 
where a larger vessel may have to struggle with the wind 
or get becalmed for want of it, the open boat, propelled 
by stout oarsmen, can force a passage with more or less 
ease. Fitted with a "lug," i.e. a square sail fixed to a 
yard that hangs obliquely to the mast, it is used along 
the east coast for fishing on a small scale. A long open 
boat provided with two lug-sails, known as a Scotch 
lugger, is still a great favourite with the North Sea 
herring-fishers. 

24 



THE FISHERMAN'S TOOLS 

Next comes the type of vessel most associated in our 
minds with the sea-fisheries — the decked boat or smack. 
More often than not she is " cutter-rigged, 1 ' having a 
single mast with main-sail, top-sail, jib-sail, and fore-sail. 
Yawls, or yawl-rigged smacks, only differ from the other 
kind in having a second mast aft — the mizzen. The 
smack has a cabin furnished with a stove and three or 
four bunks, while, for storage purposes, the ample spaces 
below hatches in the fore part of the ship are used. 
Larger decked boats — schooners, brigs, and other square- 
rigged craft — are employed in the whaling and sponge 
trade, and also by the American cod-fishers ; but as a rule 
these are not so much actual fishing-boats as storehouses, 
lodging-houses for the crew, and workshops. They are 
supplied with a number of small rowing-boats which do 
the catching work and unload their cargo into the larger 
vessel at night. 

Now as to the gear or tackle necessary in fishing from 
boats. It may be classified under three heads : lines, nets, 
and pots. Lines may be of the simpler sort, whether with 
rod and winch, as used in tarpon-fishing, or only intended 
to be held in the hand ("hand lines 11 ), such as are employed 
on the east coast for cod, and on the south for whiting ; or 
they may be of the more complicated kind known as " long 
lines. 11 The last named are used by the Scotch and North 
Country fishermen for haddocks, and by many of the 
American cod-crews ; they are furnished with hooks which 
vary in size and number, and which — like hand and rod 
lines — are baited according to the class of fish sought ; 

25 



THE FISHERMAN'S TOOLS 

the baits most commonly in use being mussels, whelks, 
hermit-crabs, and squid or cuttle-fish. Long lines, when 
joined up to form a series, often stretch for more than a 
mile, and carry as many as four or five thousand hooks. 

Under the head of nets are included trawls, drift-nets, 
seines, moored nets, and dredges. The traivl (or trail) 
net, the most important and elaborate of these, is a huge 
meshed bag which runs down to a point, and the mouth 
of Avhich is fastened to a pole or " beam," ordinarily about 
forty feet long. At either end of the beam, and at right 
angles to it, is a sort of triangular broad hoop of iron, 
measuring about three feet from base to apex. These 
hoops — " trawl-heads " as they are called — serve the three- 
fold purpose of sinking the net ; of supporting the beam, 
keeping it well off the bottom ; and of gliding over the 
sand like the runners of a sledge, as the boat moves. The 
same net, on a somewhat smaller scale and with finer 
mesh-work, is used for shrimping. 

A drift-net is a much less pretentious arrangement, being 
a long wall (" fleet ") of small single nets fastened together 
in a line. Buoyed above with corks and bladders so that 
it may hang perpendicularly in the water, the series of 
nets drifts gently along at the tail of a boat, and a shoal 
of fish swimming straight at it, or driven towards it by the 
current, would soon be inextricably fixed in the meshes. 

The seine (the sagcne of the old Greek fishermen) is a 
plain net, corked above and leaded below ; the top level, 
but the bottom slightly curved ; it may be of any size, 
from the Cornish pilchard-seine, which is twelve hundred 
feet long and sixty feet deep, to the little net worked by 

26 



THE FISHERMAN'S TOOLS 

the fisher-girls in Brittany, or the ground-seine commonly 
found in the Channel sprat-fishing. In a general way the 
seine is shot from a rowing-boat, and is dragged ashore in 
a semicircle by ropes fastened to its two ends. Moored 
nets are those, no matter of what shape, which are fixed in 
certain spots by means of anchors. They may be seen in 
great numbers across the mouths of Scotch, French, and 
Scandinavian rivers, where the tide, whether ebbing or 
flowing, soon drives the fish against them. The dredge, 
used principally for oysters, is a very small bag-like net, 
the under part of which is composed of wire rings and 
the upper of small string meshes. It is supported by a 
triangular heavy iron frame, to which a stout rope long 
enough to reach to the bottom is attached. The dredge 
is thrown overboard, allowed to scrape along the sand for 
a few minutes, hauled up, emptied, and thrown over again. 

The third class of contrivance, pots, are used for the 
snaring of crabs, lobsters, etc. They are made of wicker, 
or of network stretched on an iron frame ; are baited with 
fish or meat, and are sunk singly or in rows by means of 
heavy stones, their position being marked by cork buoys. 

To this list of fishermen's requisites must be added 
another item — experience. Every amateur angler, whether 
it be the small boy who fishes for minnows with cotton 
and a bent pin, or the stalwart sportsman who whips the 
Scandinavian streams for salmon, is aware that, without a 
knowledge both of the habits and whereabouts of his fish, 
and also of the proper manipulation of his tackle, he will 
never catch anything except by sheer chance. And such 
knowledge, important as it is, constitutes only a portion 

27 



THE FISHERMAN'S TOOLS 

of what is essential to the professional fishermen of civil- 
ised countries. 

Before the sea-fisher is at liberty to bestow many 
thoughts upon either fish or tackle, he must learn to be a 
sailor ; must understand the mystery of tides and currents 
and winds ; be well acquainted with the nature of the 
ground on which he has to work ; and be prepared to 
perform every conceivable duty on board, from swabbing 
the deck to steering the smack through a squall or a fog. 
Even then his education is by no means complete. Apart 
from the thousand and one minor repairs to boat and 
tackle for which he is responsible, apart even from the 
many tricks of the trade that he must know before he can 
secure and land his catch, almost every class of fisherman 
has special duties to perform in connection with the fish 
after they are caught : cleaning, sorting, packing, drying, 
salting — all of it work, that sounds and looks far easier 
than it is. 

From this it will be seen that the fisherman's life is not 
a lazy one ; neither is it a very safe one, especially where 
open-boat fishing is concerned. It is, moreover, pre- 
carious in the extreme ; too much or too little wind may 
keep the boats ashore for days at a time ; an overstocked 
market may render a whole day's catch valueless, except 
as manure ; a sea-monster or passing ship may ruin fifty 
pounds 1 worth of gear in fifty seconds. 

But there is a brighter side to the picture. There are 
strokes of luck to be considered — extraordinary catches, 
at a time when prices are high — a few of which will make 
the fisherman comparatively wealthy. Of the healthiness 

28 



THE FISHERMAN'S TOOLS 

of the occupation there can be no two opinions ; some of 
the finest imaginable specimens of manhood can easily be 
picked from among British, Scandinavian, or American 
fishermen ; men of seventy years of age may be seen work- 
ing with the speed and energy of lads of twenty. 

There is a romance too, a fascination, about the call- 
ing that is seldom to be found in any other. The hard 
labour, the ever-present danger, and the decidedly un- 
romantic smell of fish or tar or oil are, in the fisher's 
estimation, amply outweighed by the sense of freedom 
that his daily contact with the sea produces. The labour 
and the smells he takes for granted ; the danger he seldom 
troubles about — to think about it is often to incur it. 
He is a sort of cheerful fatalist ; if he is marked for 
drowning, drown he must, some day or another. 

He would not, in one case out of a hundred, change his 
trade for any other ; all other methods of life are to him 
cramping and enervating, and lacking in liberty. There 
is an old Kent-coast fisherman who worked regularly on 
board his smack, in foul weather and fair, till he was 
eighty years old. Then he at length yielded to the per- 
suasions of a wealthy grandson, who took him to London, 
gave him rooms in his own house, and supplied him with 
all manner of luxuries. The dear old fellow tried town 
life and idleness for nearly a year ; then one day he 
suddenly disappeared — he had gone back quietly to the 
work of his boyhood. He is now eighty-three, and prides 
himself on doing as good a day's fishing as the rest of his 
crew. Had he remained in London he would probably 
have been dead long ago. 

29 



CHAPTER III 
TRAWLING 

"Off" with the boats — The start — The fisherman's attitude towards 
strangers— An East Coast trawler — The net — The fisherman at sea 
— Shooting the trawl — Special ' ' catches " — The net hauled up — 
Where the hard work comes in — The steam carrier — What is done 
with the catch — Steam-trawling — Little private ventures. 

TO sea -loving people there is a peculiar charm 
attaching to the departure, whether by day or by 
night, of a fishing-fleet. When the boats go off 
by daylight there is the pleasing bustle and scurry 
attendant on the putting out to sea of two or three 
hundred men, all of them robust, healthy, and light- 
hearted. There is the vivid, continually changing 
panorama, made up of picturesque costumes, gaily 
painted boats which are being dragged down the shingle 
or tossed up and down on the waves in their effort to 
reach the smacks lying at moorings ; the steady rise of 
the white or brown main-sail as it is hauled up by a 
couple of men ; finishing with the graceful movement of 
the vessel herself as she slips her cable and sets off on her 
little voyage. 

At night the charm is different. It is there all the 
same ; to the taste of many people it is even intensified. 
Darkness has taken the place of daylight, and it remains 

30 



TRAWLING 

for the ear to be entertained rather than the eye. The 
crunch of boat-keels over the pebbly beach, the hollow 
shouts of the men, the plash and rumble of the oars — 
noises that, in the daytime, pass unnoticed because they 
are drowned by others from the land — are now not only 
heard, but almost felt. The atmosphere of gaiety that is 
a feature of a daylight departure is wanting now, for the 
men have been called out of snug beds to catch the tide 
that must be taken, if not " at the flood," at least soon 
after the ebb has begun ; some are sulky, others half 
asleep, and the rest are silent because even the most 
civil remark might beget a surly answer or be ignored 
altogether. 

As each boat reaches the water's edge there is a 
splashing sound ; the big, sea-booted men are scrambling 
into their places. Then comes the rhythmical knock- 
knock of the oars against the rowlocks as the boat 
hurries away into the gloom, her passage marked by the 
phosphorescent line left as she passes through the water, 
and by the pale gold drops that fall from the oar-blades. 
Presently the watcher on the shore hears a bump and a 
grating noise; the little boat has got alongside the smack; 
the men are clambering on board ; the boat is made fast 
astern of the larger vessel, and work is about to begin. 
How the crew have distinguished their particular smack 
from the fifty, hundred, or two hundred lying at anchor 
is, to the landsman, a profound mystery ; yet there has 
not been an instant of hesitation in the fishermen's minds ; 
they have threaded their way as easily and naturally 
among the large fleet as a London policeman would cross 

3i 



TRAWLING 

the Strand, and have pulled unerringly up to their own 
ship. 

Now there are fresh noises that again we should prob- 
ably be unconscious of by day : the spasmodic rattle of 
the rings on the mast, as the gaff and main-sail are hauled 
into position ; or the more rapid and regular click-click of 
the chain-cable as it is allowed to run through the hawse- 
hole or over the bow. The fore-sail and jib-sail are set ; 
perhaps the top-sail as well, if wind be scarce ; and the 
smack at last separates herself from the others which are 
in various stages of readiness, and, in ghostly fashion, 
slips away into the darkness. 

This gradual disappearance of boat after boat — or of 
the whole fleet together — rather piques the watcher's 
curiosity. The fisher crews are going away for a day or 
two ; perhaps a week ; most likely a couple of months or 
more, if they are trawlers. What is going to happen 
during all that time ? The inquisitive one must go and 
see for himself, for he can, in that way, learn more in a 
few hours than six months 1 hearsay would teach him. If 
he is known to the men, a good sailor, and is prepared to 
" rough it," nothing is easier ; if he knows enough about 
seamanship to be able to bear a hand on board (without 
going out of his way to try to teach the skipper how to 
manage his own boat) he may even be received with open 
arms. I say " if he is known to the men." Fishermen 
vary in their attitude towards landsmen. A Yankee cod- 
skipper who is short of a hand would not hesitate to 
engage even a tram-conductor or a hairdresser; and 
would argue that, by the time the ground was reached, 

32 



TRAWLING 

the new man would be either competent or dead. An 
Irish crew would be " hail-fellow " with any man who did 
not look like being sea-sick. The Scotch, North Country, 
and East Coast fishermen will take the stranger aboard if 
they are once persuaded that he is prepared to learn a 
very great deal from them. They do not seek to magnify 
the danger ; rather the reverse, in fact ; but they do like 
the landsman to feel that he is being initiated into a 
mystery that is far too deep for his intellect to grasp all 
in a hurry. 

A cheery word or two, and a readiness to hand round 
one^ tobacco, or possibly a hint as to a trifling donation 
at the end of the day, are the only passports necessary 
to make one shipmates with the South Country fisherman, 
save and except him of certain parts of Devonshire. To 
the Clovelly or Brixham fisherman, the man from the 
next village is a stranger and a foreigner ; and, till 
recently, it were better for that man that he should keep 
out of the way. Even to-day, unless there is very strong 
influence at work, the visitor from a distance would stand 
quite as much chance of being invited aboard the royal 
yacht as of being allowed to sail with a Brixham trawler. 

Let the reader imagine himself, then, on board one 
of the Lowestoft or Yarmouth or Hull boats. She is 
either cutter- or yawl-rigged ; probably the latter, as 
being safer in the heavy winter seas off the Dogger Bank. 
Instead of making sail from her moorings, she has most 
likely been towed out to sea, with others, by a steam-tug. 

As the sun shows signs of rising, the stranger has an 
opportunity of looking about him and taking in his new 
c 33 



TRAWLING 

quarters. Along the port (or left-hand) side of the boat 
is the trawl-net — the heavy, iron-runnered beam lying 
along the deck ; the " cod," or pointed bottom of the 
net, looped up to the rigging. On examination it is 
seen that one side of the net's mouth is fastened, all the 
way down, to the beam and the trawl -heads ; the other 
is formed by an enormously thick rope — the " foot-rope " 
— much longer than the beam itself, to which the first 
row of meshes on that side is attached. Close by are 
huge coils of rope which look as though they too ought 
to belong to the trawl. 

Swish ! A bucket of water eddies round your ankles, 
and you speedily resolve to postpone your investigations 
till a more seasonable hour, as an energetic fisher-lad 
diligently scrubs at the deck with his short-handled broom. 
Not that it wants scrubbing; the only marks on it are 
a few smuts from the chimney of the cabin, where some 
one is lighting a fire to boil the breakfast kettle ; but the 
seaman is the cleanest soul on earth, and washes his decks 
from habit, and his hands twenty times to any other 
working man's once. 

Somebody calls out that the kettle boils, and the 
hitherto silent fishermen show signs of growing talkative. 
In warm weather, or at busy times, they take their meal 
on deck ; at other times in the cabin, going down by 
twos and threes, or occasionally — with the exception of 
the man at the helm — en masse. The tea has been made 
in the kettle, and is now poured into iron mugs or 
gallipots, while a condensed-milk tin is solemnly scrubbed 
out to serve as a drinking-vessel for that courteous mera- 

34 



TRAWLING 

ber of the crew who has placed his own mug at the 
guest's disposal. 

Fish might be the greatest rarity at sea, if one judged 
from the fact that at least three of the men have brought 
kippers or red herrings to toast for their breakfast. 

The cabin of one of these smacks is not the perfection 
of comfort ; in many of them a man of medium height 
cannot even stand upright; the floor is wet, sometimes 
sloppy, and the intense heat makes every one anxious to 
escape to the fresh air as soon as possible. Coming up on 
deck again, you find that it is broad daylight ; the land 
has disappeared, or else stands out only in dark outline ; 
perhaps you have broken away from the main fleet and 
there is not a boat within hail ; the wind is fresh, the 
smack slips swiftly and delicately over the waves, and 
you begin to understand why the fisherman looks with 
contempt on all occupations except his own. 

At length signs of attention to business reappear ; 
pipes are stowed away ; the after- breakfast chatter dies 
down ; the taciturn old fellow at the helm takes a fresh 
quid of tobacco and mutters some order about easing the 
fore-sail or lowering the top-sail ; the younger men 
abandon their speculations as to whether the Skylark 
or the John and Mary or the Minnie Brown ships 
just as much water as she did before she went for repairs, 
and give themselves up to a close inspection of the gear. 
A few minutes, or hours — as the case may be — pass ; then 
the main-sail is pulled round to leeward, other sails are 
lowered or eased, and you realise that at last the men are 
going to fish. 

35 



TRAWLING 

The smack is in thirty, perhaps forty, fathoms of water, 
and down at or near the bottom are soles and plaice, 
halibut and brill, with, perhaps, a score of other kinds of 
iish : turbot, lemon-soles, skate, cod, haddock, whiting — 
to say nothing of the less-known megrims, witches, pouting, 
coal-fish, and pollack — all waiting to swim into, or be 
scooped up by, the great trawl-net. The size of this net 
naturally varies according to the size of the vessel carry- 
ing it ; the beam is any length from five-and- thirty to 
fifty feet ; the meshes increase in size towards the mouth, 
being about an inch and a half square at the bottom, and 
about four inches at the top. 

Now comes the moment for throwing it overboard (a 
fisherman always speaks of "shooting 11 the net). To 
each trawl-head or runner a long rope — the " bridle " — 
is made fast, and a third rope is shackled to the 
bridle-ends. 

" All right ! Let go ! n growls the skipper. 

The heavy beam has disappeared ; trawling has begun ; 
and, for so many days, weeks, or months, the crew has 
settled down to a seemingly monotonous and endless task. 
The boat has slackened her speed ; often she appears to 
make no progress at all. If the weather is not too 
rough she is left to go whither she will, for, with the 
ponderous trawl clogging her like a sea-anchor, she cannot 
run far away. There she lies, tossed lightly about by 
wave and breeze ; patiently dragging her net from left or 
right, according to the tide and wind. What will the first 
haul be like ? 

At present our skipper is only feeling his way ; he 

36 



TRAWLING 

wants to find smooth ground, for only there can the trawl 
work satisfactorily. 

And what is going on all that distance below our feet ? 
We talk airily about so many fathoms, without perhaps 
readily grasping what such a depth means. Imagine a 
distance nearly four times the length of a cricket-pitch ; 
that is how deep down our net is lying. The beam, held 
three or four feet off the ground by its two runners, is 
riding slowly and easily along ; the foot-rope is scraping 
over the bottom, disturbing and bewildering the fish, 
which are scooped up by it before they know where they 
are ; and, finding that they cannot escape above, they 
never seem to dream of trying to get out the way they 
came in. 

Although it is an everyday incident in their lives — or, 
rather, an incident which happens a great many times 
every day and night of their life at sea — the trawlers 
always seem to get up a semi-enthusiasm, a few moments 
of the breathless excitement of expectation, when the 
time comes for hauling in. The older hands no doubt 
affect a sort of indifference, but the little pleasurable 
thrill — the gambler's " eye to the off-chance " — is there 
for those who can see it. And no wonder ; for buried 
treasure has been brought up on various occasions. Did 
not some Margate fishermen once pull up a metal pot 
crammed full of golden guineas ? Moreover, the memory 
of another, and perhaps more likely, treasure is still 
green in the minds of the North Sea trawlers. There are 
men still living who once saw a trawl-net pulled up near 
the Dogger packed as full as it could be with one of the 

37 



TRAWLING 

most expensive fish on the market — soles. The net had 
somehow stumbled across a hollow, where a complete 
colony of these creatures had taken up its abode ; and, in 
a short time, seven tons of them were taken. The value 
of such a catch would be at least £400. I have heard this 
tale from fishermen in various quarters, and Mr. James 
Runciman, writing in 1886, speaks of it as an established 
fact, adding that the haul was described to him by an 
actual member of the fortunate crew. 

The methods of raising the net differ. Our East Coast 
boat will, in all probability, have a kind of patent capstan, 
worked by steam power, which hoists the trawl amid- 
ships ; the southern boats, however, like the shrimpers, 
have a large hand-winch or windlass which draws up the 
fore-bridle over the bows, while the after-bridle is pulled 
up by hand, or wound round a smaller winch astern. 
These South Coast trawlers, by the way, do not usually 
fish in fleets as the others do. 

At last the beam shows itself above water, and strong 
hands lift it over the bulwarks. But how on earth, asks 
the neophyte, can those ropes bear the strain of such a 
weight ? More, how can those paltry-looking bits of 
string, that form the meshes, hold together when weighed 
down by a burthen so tremendous ? Such a question 
belongs to the realm of mechanics ; the fact remains that 
not one rope in ten thousand does break, and it is the 
exception rather than the rule for a mesh to give way. 

Now only the net lies in the water, and, by means of 
stout ropes, this is hoisted up and its contents shot out 
on to a space temporarily boarded off on deck. 

38 



TRAWLING 

The men cast a swift, appraising eye over the catch — 
the more experienced can tell, within a very little, what 
it is worth to them — then lower the trawl again ; unless 
the catch is entirely unsatisfactory, in which case they 
may make sail a little farther away before doing so. 

" Is that all ? " asks the landsman. " Then where does 
the hard work come in ? " 

The hard work is only beginning. All those hundreds 
or thousands of fish that lie feebly gasping there, inter- 
spersed with shrimps, crabs, shells, and seaweed, have to 
be cleaned, sorted out, and packed in boxes ready for the 
carrier ; cramping, back-breaking work it is, too ; and, by 
the time it is done, the trawl is probably ready to be 
pulled up again. Up it comes ; then the same moment 
of expectancy ; the same straining and dragging ; the 
same groping and stooping and sorting — then another 
net-full ready to be hoisted in. Night comes on, and the 
men " turn in " one or two at a time, according to the 
number of the crew. 

Till lately (in many instances the custom still exists), 
in winter, the boats going off for a long spell carried 
ice with them and stored the fish in it, bringing back the 
whole cargo themselves at the end of the trip. This is 
most largely done in the case of plaice, soles, and halibut. 
But more commonly now, whether in winter or summer, 
whether fishing off the Dogger or the Danish and Dutch 
Banks, steam carriers go out from Yarmouth or Grimsby 
or Hull almost daily, and their visit makes a break in the 
monotony to which every one looks forward. 

The carrier is a boat of powerful build, very high in 

39 



TRAWLING 

the bows, and as low in the stern as a Thames barge. As 
soon as she comes in sight all is bustle and excitement 
on board the trawlers. The little boat that has been 
trailing behind each smack is hauled alongside ; one or 
two men get in, and the boxes are handed over to them. 
In the calmest weather there is a certain amount of 
risk attaching to this work of transporting the fish to the 
carrier. Every one knows what the swell from a good- 
sized steamer is ; a small boat getting into its wash 
must expect a good deal of buffeting. But when the sea 
is really rough — and the German Ocean can afford as fair 
a sample of roughness as most — it seems impossible that 
these little dinghies can live in it. Yet an accident rarely 
happens. Very patiently the tiny craft makes her way to 
the side of the carrier, and before the spectator has had 
time to make up his mind whether or no she will be 
smashed to splinters against the larger vessel, she is on 
her way back again with a cargo of empty cases, perhaps 
a few necessaries in the way of food or fresh water, and, 
by chance, a letter or a couple of newspapers. 

Nowadays carriers and tugs, having a shrewd eye to 
business, have a trawl-net on board ; and, in their spare 
time, the crews do a little fishing on their own account. 
This is especially the case with the Falmouth and Cardiff 
tugs. 

The Scotch, less conservative than the South Britons, 
have almost abandoned sailing-vessels for trawling ; and, 
except in the case of small private ventures, it is safe to 
say that at Leith, Aberdeen, and other Scotch ports, the 
trawling is all done by screw-steamers. This, of course, 

40 



TRAWLING 

means larger and heavier tackle, a larger crew (including 
deck-hands, whose work is to see to the cleaning and 
storing of the fish, and to do odd jobs aboard), and larger 
catches. Boats of this description are provided not only 
with patent capstans, but also with blocks and ropes for 
hoisting the bag of the trawl on board. 

The Irish fleets still cleave to the older sailing-boat 
method; in 1900 Dublin alone possessed a fleet of over 
fifty cutter-rigged smacks averaging forty tons. 

It must not be supposed that trawling is confined to 
Leith, Grimsby, Ramsgate, Brixham, and a few such 
important centres. In almost every fishing-town there 
are men who, in spring and summer, go out short 
distances for a day or two at a time with a view to 
supplying just the local market. If an owner does not 
happen to possess trawling-gear he can soon hire it ; at a 
pinch he can use his shrimp-net, which is practically the 
same thing. 

Private ventures such as this are often exceedingly 
lucrative, for the expenses and wear and tear are inappreci- 
able as compared with those of a regular trawler ; and 
each man frequently finds that he has earned as much in 
those few hours or days as he could make at other fishing 
in as many weeks. 



4i 



CHAPTER IV 

SHRIMPING, MUSSELLING, AND 
LINE-FISHING 

Shrimps — The push-net — On board a Dutch visschers-boot — Dutch 
fishermen — Preparations for boiling — Hauling up the shrimp-net — 
Emptying — The catch — Sorting — 'Ware crabs ! — And fox-fish — 
Boiling — Hot shrimps — Danger of the trade — Prawns and prawn- 
catching — Mussels — What becomes of them all — Transplanting — 
Mussels by the barge-load — Line-fishing — Hand lines — Long 
lines — Ready-baited hooks — Paying out the lines — " Bending-on " 
— Two or three miles of lines — Bringing in the catch — Longer 
lines—" Bulters." 

SHRIMPS are never out of season ; and prawns only 
during the last two months of the year. Prices 
vary simply because the fish are so much more 
plentiful at one time than another. 

The push-net, to be seen at all seaside places in the 
summer months, is apt to mislead us into the belief that 
the shrimp is a shallow-water fish, which he is not. In 
shallows he is an accident ; in deep water a feature. The 
men whom you see " ploughing the sand " with a hand 
net at low water are either out of work or making over- 
time, and we cannot allow their claim to the dignified 
title of " shrimper." Ask the Dutchmen or the Kent and 
Essex fishermen what they understand by shrimping. 
Push-netting, they will tell you, is children's amusement ; 

42 



SHRIMPING AND LINE-FISHING 

some will even sarcastically affect never to have heard 
of it. 

Let us have a day off with a Dutch visschers-boot (which 
we may manage to do if our command of German, Dutch, 
or Flemish be of such a nature as to persuade the crew 
that we are anything but British), and we shall have a 
chance of seeing why shrimpers demand to be classed with 
trawlers and other workers at dangerous trades. 

Those who laugh at the Dutch fishermen have not seen 
them at their work (except English fishermen ; and these 
justify the proverb that two of a trade seldom agree). 
They may let their hair grow rather long ; they may 
wear wooden shoes — nowadays they far more often invest 
in English-made sea-boots; they may require a very 
great deal of alcohol to enable them to face a gale ; but 
their clever seamanship, their industry, and, when it 
comes to the pinch, their cool courage, demand that we 
shall speak of them with all respect. It is to these men 
that the London market is indebted for its winter supply 
of shrimps ; in fact, from December to June, by far the 
greater quantity comes from Holland, the fish being 
vastly inferior to those taken from the Thames estuary. 

Each smack, with an average crew of four, carries a net 
shorter than a trawl and of much smaller mesh, but not 
otherwise differing ; and the men work almost a whole 
tide, going off with the ebb and not returning till nearly 
flood. Such boats will go from fifteen to thirty miles 
away, working every minute of daylight. The men 
know well enough, within a little, where they will find 
their fish, and, with a favourable wind, will soon be 

43 



SHRIMPING, MUSSELLING 

on the spot. Most boats carry a dredge, attached to 
a very long warp, which, as soon as they have shortened 
sail, they throw over once or twice to test the bottom. 
If the result of the trial be satisfactory, the net is lowered 
as described in Chapter III, and in the same manner is 
towed slowly along the sand. 

As soon as the net has been shot, preparations are 
made for the shrimp-boiling, which almost invariably is 
done on board. When the fore-hatch is taken up we see, 
below, an ordinary washing-copper with a good-sized 
grate under it, and, in it, the water and the waste 
shrimps from yesterday's boiling. The water is baled 
out and flung overboard, but not the shrimps. It may 
be superstition or it may be scientific fact, but all 
shrimpers are of opinion that boiled shrimps are poison- 
ous to their own kind, and that the living fish have no 
instinct to warn them of that fact. Therefore any that 
are left over (the "cleanings") are made into a small 
parcel to be thrown away when the men come ashore. 

The copper being filled with sea- water to which several 
generous handfuls of salt have been added, the fire is lit, 
and, by the time the men are ready for it, the copper will 
be boiling. Next the "zeef" (anglice, "strainer'''') is 
handed out and laid slanting from the bulwarks to the 
deck, to leeward ; it is an oblong wooden frame about 
six feet by three, with a wire bottom, just such as brick- 
layers' 1 labourers use for screening sand. 

The hauling up of a shrimp-net is a less arduous un- 
dertaking than the raising of a trawl, though it is quite 
heavy enough to keep four men well employed for several 

44 



AND LINE-FISHING 

minutes. In the bows is a powerful windlass to which 
the fore-bridle, or else a tow-line connected with the two 
bridles, is fixed, and then the winding up begins — hard 
work even for a couple of strong men accustomed to such 
labour. If the net is being pulled up by the fore-bridle 
only, two other men are working in the stern, hauling in 
the aft-bridle ; if by a tow-line, they stand by to haul on 
the after-bridle as soon as it comes in sight. At last the 
beam comes up, is hoisted in, and the full net hangs over 
the side, half in the water. Now a space must be made 
for the fish. From the main-hatch to the after-cabin a 
plank is laid on its edge on either side, thereby making, 
with the uprights of the hatchways, a rectangular case 
into which the net may be emptied. 

As far as in them lies, these Dutch fishers evince the 
same momentary excitement over the contents of the net 
that we have seen among the trawlers. After looking at 
a full trawl-net this one seems curiously small and empty ; 
and, as a hauling-line is thrown round the waist of the 
net, it looks as though we could pull it out of the water 
with one hand ; nevertheless, there is four hundredweight 
or more in that bag-like contrivance, and the men find 
quite enough difficulty in hoisting it out of the water 
and over the bulwarks. 

The mouth is laid inside the temporary enclosure, and 
then, with a good deal of lifting and shaking, the catch 
is emptied, the net examined in case of possible breakages 
among the meshes, and then thrown in again. 

Now have a look at the catch ; a most interesting sight 
when seen for the first time ; a grey-green, glistening, and 

45 



SHRIMPING, MUSSELLING 

slightly palpitating mass, speckled with the dark green, 
pink, red, or white bodies of crabs of all sorts and sizes. 
Here and there is a something that brings a moment's 
pleasure to the eyes of the men : a good plump sole or 
two, for which a private buyer will probably give fifty 
cents apiece; perhaps even a turbot, the sale of which 
will keep the crew in tobacco for close on a week ; perhaps 
a handful of prawns. 

But looking at them will not sort the fish. Here 
begins the really hard work ; shrimps, and nothing but 
shrimps, must go into the boiling-copper, and no genius 
has yet arisen to separate them from the rubbish by other 
means than going down on the hands and knees and 
picking out good from no good. In warm weather this 
part of the work is troublesome enough; but try it in 
winter with the rain or sleet beating in your face, and 
your hands aching with cold. Aching is a very mild 
term ; I have seen stalwart fellows, who have experi- 
enced all the terrors of Antarctic and Iceland weather, 
almost cry with the cold in their fingers, while en- 
gaged in shrimp-sorting within thirty miles of the 
English coast. 

But to work ; and go gingerly, for there be crabs 
about ; not one of them big enough to be eaten, but 
literally thousands that are prepared to eat as much of 
you as you feel disposed to let them. Here is one nasty 
little wretch — the " fliker " or fly-crab the men call it — 
no bigger than a five-shilling piece, that will make a dead 
set at you and bite to the bone. Smash him with your 
boot or a stone, for he devours the fish and is no good 

46 



AND LINE-FISHING 

even as whelk-bait. Other kinds of crabs are allowed 
to depart in peace, but not this one if it can be helped. 

Lightly flicking out the shrimps with the finger-tips, 
the men gradually raise them into heaps, which are soon 
scraped into a tub by the "boiler," and thrown into 
the copper. Now and then a few dabs, codling, or 
whiting are found ; they are thrown into a bucket for 
subsequent sale or supper. Lightly veiled by a sparse 
covering of shrimps is another white body ; " more fish," 
you say, and go to take hold of it ; but it is a white- 
bellied crab, which fact you may not discover, if you are 
foolish enough to put your hand on it, till the crab 
himself informs you. Now here is a fox-fish ; a thing 
something like a fat whiting, spotted with grey and 
black. Take him by the tail and throw him overboard 
behind you as quickly and carefully as if he were red- 
hot ; hold him two seconds and you will regret it. His 
gill-cover is elongated into a sharp, stiff spike, and the 
moment he is touched he springs round salmon-like and 
digs this into you, or scratches you with it. Fishermen 
say that the sting is poisonous, but, experto crede, it is 
nothing of the kind. He is no good for eating, but if 
you find a relative of his, the weever, put him aside ; 
skinned and fried it would be difficult to find a fish more 
delicate and satisfying. It has the same weapon — and 
the same handy way of using it — as the fox-fish. 

At last the sorting is done ; the waste is brushed 
through the port-holes and the crew are ready for the 
second hauling. The number of the hauls will depend 
on the light, the weather, and the plentifulness of the 

47 



SHRIMPING, MUSSELLING 

fish. If these are scarce, the sorting will be finished 
quickly, and the men all the sooner free for another 
haul ; if there is little wind the net must stay down 
longer, for in such a case it is often being dragged over 
the same spot again and again instead of going on to 
fresh ground. Four hauls per day would be a fair average. 

Now let us watch the man who is responsible for the 
boiling. There he is, down in the hold, giving the fish 
a stir round from time to time, or throwing them up by 
the dipper-full into the strainer. His water has nearly 
boiled away, and one of the crew dips him another couple 
of bucketfuls from over the side ; and, as this comes to 
the boil, we have an opportunity of watching the cook- 
ing process right through. Into the copper goes a piled 
pailful of the grey-green, semi-transparent fish, and as 
the water closes over them, we hear a faint cheep-cheep 
sound ; this is not the wailing of the shrimps ; it is 
merely the water running into the air-passages, and you 
would hear the same noise were the fish given a cold bath 
instead of a hot. 

In a minute or two the shrimps have changed their 
colour ; they are " done, 1 ' and the boiler dips them out 
and throws them on the top of the others that are 
draining in the sieve. Now try them ; if you have once 
tasted newly caught shrimps hot, you will not give a Jico 
for them eaten cold. You can eat as many as you like, 
for they are plentiful enough generally ; many are 
destined never to come to the shop or the market at all, 
but to be thrown on the land as manure. Perhaps, when 
these poor fishermen get ashore, a telegram will be await- 

48 



AND LINE-FISHING 

incr them to the effect that their dealer can take no more 
shrimps for another three days. 

A shrimp-boiler has one trouble in life, for which the 
young skate and other small fry are responsible. Many 
dark-skinned fish, in their baby form, are the exact length 
and colour of shrimps, and, however carefully sorted the 
fish may have been, several of these are sure to appear 
among those set aside for boiling. Before these are 
thrown into the copper they are closely inspected again, 
and even then a score of trespassers will appear in the 
boiling water, time after time deluding the boiler into 
the belief that they are half-cooked shrimps. 

As the sieve fills, the shrimps are taken out and put 
into bags ; and so the day goes on till eighty or a hun- 
dred or more gallons are thus stowed away, and the boat 
heads for home with the returning tide. The shrimps 
will be taken ashore, measured into barrels, canvased 
down, and sent away by cart or train. 

Is there much danger in shrimping ? A certain amount, 
weather apart, even ; because, when men are working a 
whole tide, it is often necessary to do some of the fishing 
in the half-light of morning or evening, and it is then 
that accidents take place. At such a time a man may be 
unwittingly standing in the way of a warp which he can 
scarcely see, while the net is being shot, and may find 
himself entangled in it suddenly and dragged overboard 
almost before he can cry out. In this way a certain 
number of lives are lost every year, for the bulk of the 
work being done by daylight, few boats ever trouble to 
carry a lamp. 

D 49 



SHRIMPING, MUSSELLING 

Why are some shrimps pink and others brown ? is a 
question that has puzzled many of us in childhood. The 
pink shrimps appear to be a sort of connecting link be- 
tween the brown ones and prawns. The two are seldom 
found together in great numbers ; in a neighbourhood 
where the shrimps are brown there will also be a 
sprinkling of the others, and vice versa. 

The prawn, apart from being much larger, is dis- 
tinguished from the shrimp by its saw-like spine and by 
its enormously long external antennae, which are half as 
long again as the fish itself. A live prawn is a most 
beautiful thing : steel-grey, marked all over with purple 
spots and lines ; its eyes are its most extraordinary 
feature, for they stand out like spots of flame or of the 
most brilliantly burnished copper. In their adult con- 
dition prawns are less fond of deep water than shrimps, 
though a few are generally taken in the shrimp-net. 
They rather prefer the still, clear pools among the rocks, 
where they play and hide among the seaweed. They are 
caught in two ways : in traps like the ordinary lobster- 
pot on a smaller scale ; and in a sort of landing-net, made 
by hanging a net-bag on an iron hoop fixed at the end 
of a long pole. 

When fishermen have nothing better to do, another 
branch of the trade is open to them whenever the weather 
permits — musselling. 

-Sea- water mussels are divisible into many classes, but 
the two best known are the common mussel and the 
horn-mussel ; the latter differing slightly from the former 
in shape and in its habit of digging and burrowing in 

5° 



AND LINE-FISHING 

the sand. As an article of food, these animals are prob- 
ably as nourishing as oysters, though they are so often 
said to be poisonous. Whether they are so, or not, must, 
as with snails, depend largely upon the feeding ; a mussel 
that has passed a good part of its life clinging to the 
copper bottom of a liner can scarcely be wholesome as 
food. In any case the fish should never be eaten during 
the summer months. 

But why " go after " mussels when so many millions of 
them are to be picked from rocks, breakwaters, and mud- 
or shingle-banks ? 

The question is reasonable enough, though it would 
never be asked by any one who had the least idea as to 
the number of mussels that are used in the United 
Kingdom alone, every year. Hundreds of thousands, not 
of mussels, but of tons of mussels, are gathered annually 
and sold ; and, absurd as it may sound, there is little 
difference between the profits made on them and those 
derived from the oyster-fishery. To France alone, the 
Belgians export over twelve million francs 1 (half a million 
pounds 1 ) worth every year. 

Then who are the consumers ? 

The ground, in the first place ; all the small mussels, 
and those which may have been tainted with sewage or/ 
poisoned by the copper bottoms of ships, are sent away 
by the barge-load for manure, or for lightening heavy 
clay soil. 

Secondly, the poor. Apart from those mussels that 
are eaten from choice, or those which the fisher-people 
out of work are sometimes glad to make a dinner of, 

5i 



SHRIMPING, MUSSELLING 

many tons of them are eaten by the London poor alone, 
every winter ; buying them at a penny a quart, a family 
can have a meal for twopence. 

Even then, we have not accounted for a third of the 
numbers given above. The prime mussels are required as 
bait for line-fishing, and are sold at the rate of rather 
less than £2 a ton (over 51,000 fish go to the ton). 
Many boats 1 crews of the Scotch and North Country 
fishers who go out into deep water for cod, haddock, etc., 
will use over four tons per boat, in a month, in this 
manner. Wherefore let it no longer be wondered at, 
that a shrimp- or oyster-boat, in her otherwise idle spells, 
should go a-musselling. Mussels used in the pearl- 
industry will be discussed in a subsequent chapter. 

Not only are these useful bivalves gathered for sale, 
but, in some parts of the coast, they are collected and 
transplanted to special beds with as much care as if they 
were oysters. Those taken from the beach, it may be 
noticed, are rarely fat and full ; perhaps the constant out- 
going of the tide disturbs their feeding. Therefore it is 
necessary to find those that frequent moderately deep 
water ; and these are obtained by dredging. The dredge 
used is very like that employed for oyster-catching ; it is 
thrown overboard from a barge or smack, and the mussels 
that it brings up are picked out from the accompanying 
mud and rubbish and stowed in the hold. 

Musselling is much more irksome than shrimping, for 
the men are often away for several days without a break, 
their object being not to catch so many boxes full or so 
many gallons, but to fill their boat till she cannot possibly 

52 



AND LINE-FISHING 

find room for another mussel. Nevertheless, the work has 
its compensations : there will certainly not be a telegram 
when the crew get ashore to say that their cargo is not 
wanted ; mussels are always wanted ; if not by the ordin- 
ary consumer, by the breeder. 

If the fishing has been done from a smack, there are 
barges waiting for her cargo to be shovelled into ; if a 
barge has been used, she will either let herself be landed 
high and dry, when she will unload into carts, or else she 
will carry her fish straight away up north or wherever 
they are wanted. A stranger looking at one of these flat- 
bottomed, ungainly craft close at hand, as she lies on the 
Thames mud, would be as surprised when he saw the same 
barge out at sea as he would if told the number of miles 
she travels in the course of a twelvemonth. Looked at 
from a distance when she is out at sea she seems as grace- 
ful a ship as sails, in spite of her funny little mizzen. 
When you see her empty and realise her storage accommo- 
dation, you do not wonder that she is used in mussel- 
dredging, considering the enormous numbers that must be 
caught before the profits can be appreciable ; for, as bait 
or manure, the catch will fetch less than a penny a 
hundred. 

Mention of mussel-bait brings us to the consideration 
of how, and by whom, it is used to such an extraordinary 
extent. 

Line-fishing is probably of far more ancient date than 
netting ; for that matter, there are savages that have used 
that method for centuries, and still have not dreamt of 
catching their fish in quantities, by means of nets. As a 

53 



SHRIMPING, MUSSELLING 

branch of the civilised fisherman's trade it can never be 
superseded until the fish have ceased to frequent those 
parts of the ocean-bed where no net will go, and till such 
fish as conger-eels will allow themselves to be taken in 
respectable numbers by the trawl. 

The simplest form of this fishing is by the use of 
"hand lines" — single lines, carrying one or more hooks, 
the upper end being kept in the hand while fishing is 
going on ; such lines are pulled up as soon as there is a 
bite, the fish gaffed off, and the hook rebaited. Naturally 
the hooks vary in size and number according to the fish 
sought. They may be seen all along the South Coast in 
use for whiting, which, belonging to the cod family, are 
more easily taken by hook than any other small sea-fish. 

The southern whiting fishery is mainly in the hands of 
individual fishermen, each man going off in his small 
rowing-boat and working on his own account, subse- 
quently selling the fish at the local market. 

The same kind of line is used off the Norfolk coast for 
cod, with a bit of cuttle-fish as bait. 

Far more pretentious and important is the " long-line 11 
fishing which we find going on in the north and east, 
and in Scotland ; turbot, cod, ling, and haddock are 
caught by the thousand in this way, both from small and 
from large boats. The smacks from the Northumbrian 
fishing villages go out towards the " bad " parts of the 
Dogger and work as long as their bait lasts. Rowing- 
boats, too, do a lot of coast work off Norfolk and Lincoln, 
going out and coming in with the tide. 

When a smack's crew is going off long-line fishing, it 

54 




The Mussel-Baiters 



Mussel-baiting is a constant occupation with the children and women-folk 
of the North-Country long-line fishers. 



AND LINE-FISHING 

may be noticed that each man has a small supply of 
baskets, otherwise known as " skeps " and " creels." Each 
of these contains a line, with hooks ready baited ; in fact, 
mussel-baiting is a constant occupation with the children 
and womenfolk of these men. When the baits have been 
fixed, the line is carefully coiled round and round, with 
the hooks in the middle, laid in the skep, and fresh grass 
or moss sprinkled over the bait to keep it from drying. 
Some of the lines bear as many as 600 hooks, and each 
has been artfully concealed with a mussel or, in default, a 
bit of herring. Every member of the crew must con- 
tribute a certain number of such lines ; generally three or 
four. 

When the boat reaches the ground she shortens sail (or 
steams gently along, for there are now many steamers en- 
gaged in this work) and preparations are made for sinking 
the lines. First of all, an iron weight or heavy stone 
tied to the end of two lines is thrown overboard ; the 
upper end of one of these which, when the weight is 
down, just reaches to the surface, is fastened to a buoy 
which carries a flagstaff. To the other line — the be- 
ginning of the " main-line " — one of the baited lines has 
been joined, or "bent on, 11 at some distance from the 
weight, and is now allowed to run itself out as the boat 
drifts gently on. 

During this proceeding one of the men is standing at 
the bulwarks holding a short metal bar at arm's length 
over the side of the boat, for the line to run over ; by 
which precaution the hooks are prevented from possibly 
catching in the boat-side. Before the whole length of 

55 



SHRIMPING, MUSSELLING 

this line has been run out another is bent on by its free 
end, and, in its turn, has a third joined to it in the same 
way as before, till all the lines are used up and stretch 
perhaps two or three miles out to sea, lying across the 
tide so that the ends of line that bear the hooks are 
kept by the force of the current at right-angles to the 
main line. 

But before the last of the lines has been allowed to 
sink, another weighted cord has been fastened to it a 
few yards from the hooked end and secured to a second 
flagged buoy as before. Now comes half an hour's — 
perhaps an hour's — rest for the men ; it is probably all 
they will get till the fishing is ended for the day ; for 
many boats carry an extra set of lines ready to be shot as 
soon as these are pulled up. At the end of the half-hour 
or hour, one of the buoy-lines is dragged up, and brings 
with it the first part of the main-line. These men are 
now pulling up from eight to ten pounds' worth of fish, 
and the lines are worth even more ; no wonder they haul 
in carefully. The fish are coming to the top at last — 
haddock, halibut, skate, ling, cod, gurnard, turbot, eels, 
and plaice ; rarely soles, for they can seldom be persuaded 
to bite at a bait ; they prefer a diet of mud, sewage, and 
seaweed. 

Some of the hooks are destitute of both fish and bait, 
which means that the "five-fingers' 1 and the crabs have 
been indulging in an easily acquired meal ; other hooks 
bear mere useless lumber : sea-spiders, crabs, and star- 
fish that have been led to their ruin through over-much 
greed. Occasionally the jawless " hag-fish " appears ; 

56 



AND LINE-FISHING 

this elegant creature has swallowed the hook entirely and 
is trying to digest it. 

To gaff and sort this collection is almost a day's work 
in itself, even if there were no second set of lines to see 
to. But at last it is done ; the fish lie in the hold 
sprinkled with salt, and the smack runs for the shore. 
There are plenty of people waiting for her ; wives and 
children of the crew, small salesmen with donkey-carts, 
perhaps a big dealer or two from the towns. She comes 
in as near as she can, then throws out a tow-line, which 
is grabbed at by every man, woman, child, and dog that 
is without other occupation, and the boat vigorously 
hauled up by them, unless the beach happens to boast a 
capstan. None so ready to bear a hand to help another 
as the fisher-folk. When did you ever hear a fisherman 
ask for help in beaching his boat ? They have been used 
all their lives to aiding one another in that as well as in 
more substantial ways than the mere lending a pull to a 
boat or rope. 

One of the dealers casts a calculating eye over the 
catch, and makes his offer — which of course is not 
accepted ; but, after a good deal of haggling, or perhaps 
of auctioneering, the catch is sold. 

Now the barrels of the dealers come rolling down the 
shingle ; every one pulls out a knife and begins cleaning 
the fish as if his life depended on it ; and, in less than 
no time, they are packed and on their way to the railway 
station, while the baskets of lines are carried home by the 
fish-wives to be patiently cleaned and rebaited for the 
next day's toil. 

57 



SHRIMPING AND LINE-FISHING 

Before we leave the subject of long-line fishing we 
must notice that done in winter by the Yarmouth and 
Cromer deep-sea fishermen when they are not trawling 
or after the herring. Most of it is done from "hatch- 
boats," large single- or two-masted smacks like those used 
for trawling, but differing in that they have a well — a 
part of the hold into which water can be run ; for the 
men are often away some days at a time, and the fish — 
cod and ling — have to be brought back alive. 

If the North Countrymen's lines were "long," those 
found here are unspeakable as regards length ; from seven 
to ten miles of line are paid out by the hatch-boats, 
often carrying five thousand hooks at a time. The ground 
is the Dogger, the bait whelks and cuttle-fish. The 
method of setting the lines is the same as that already 
described. 

There is another kind of tackle — a short long-line, 
worked on the same principle, and known as a " bulter." 
The Sussex fishermen use it with cuttle-fish bait for 
congers, skate, and hake, shooting it from large rowing- 
boats. 



58 



CHAPTER Y 
SALMON-FISHING AS AN INDUSTRY 

The salmon— Annual migration— Jumping— Spawning— Fry, smolt, 
and grilse — The Columbian grounds — Trap-nets— Seines — Hauling 
in by horse-power — The fish-wheel — Salmon-fishing among the 
Indians — Canadian moored gill-nets— Scandinavian fishery — The 
Sogne and Hardanger fjords — Natural Salmon-traps — Seines and 
net-weirs — Lapps and Finns as fishers — The sea-swallow — Salmon- 
netting at homes — Close-time — Stake-nets and stow-nets. 

IN this chapter, be it understood, we are approaching 
the salmon from a strictly business point of view ; 
the salmon as he is caught for sale and export, for 
the benefit of persons who are content to purchase six- 
pennyworth of him at a time and in a tin, or of those 
who buy him fresh or dried at their fishmonger's. 

The supple, elegant form of the salmon is as familiar 
to every one as is the delicate pink of its flesh. No fish 
has been so written about, legislated about, experimented 
on, undigested, and misunderstood ; few are more profit- 
able from the fisher's, tradesman's, and doctor's point of 
view. The fishery has been known at least as far back 
as early in the Christian era, and the trade in dried 
salmon is, at any rate in Scotland and Northumbria, a 
very ancient one. At the time of Edward IPs conflict 
with Bruce we find orders being given by the English 

59 



SALMON-FISHING AS AN INDUSTRY 

King for three thousand dried salmon for the use of his 
soldiers. Bergen, too, on the Norwegian coast, traces 
its fishery back to mediaeval times. 

The West Canadian and United States fishery, with 
which we shall first deal, is the newest, and at the same 
time the most profitable and most productive of any ; 
more than half a million cases of tinned fish being ex- 
ported every year from round about the Fraser River 
alone. 

The annual migration of these fish is very remarkable. 
They enter the rivers in spring, as soon as the waters 
have become more or less swollen by the rains, swimming 
in great numbers and usually in mid-stream and near the 
surface. At the beginning of the migration the shoals 
seem nervous and easily frightened ; so much so that a 
floating spar or bit of timber, or any shock such as the 
blasting of rocks near at hand, has been known to drive 
them out to sea again. But, once well in the stream, 
their conduct is reversed ; nothing will daunt them ; 
nothing will turn them back ; rapids, currents, and whirl- 
pools are matters of little moment to them ; they will 
spring from the low level to the top of a cascade ten or 
fifteen feet high. Their perseverance is astounding. On 
reaching a cascade, a fish, making a bent spring of its 
body by taking its tail in its mouth, will suddenly shoot 
upwards, higher, perhaps, than the upper level, yet often 
at an insufficient angle to enable it to reach it, and back 
it falls with a crash, only to " get breath " and then make 
another, possibly successful, attempt. 

Sometimes, after a score of fruitless tries at jumping 

60 



SALMON-FISHING AS AN INDUSTRY 

up, the salmon will apparently abandon the attempt, 
remaining somnolent at the foot of the rapid ; but all 
it is doing really is harbouring its strength for a further 
attempt, which the plucky creature will make after a few 
days' rest. 

Another interesting point relating to the up-river 
journey is the much-debated question as to whether the 
fish possesses a memory. Scientific men are now satisfied 
that the same fish frequently, though not invariably, visit 
the same rivers for the spawning season ; and many 
authorities are of opinion that this is due to the exercise 
of memory and preference ; albeit others still maintain 
that the salmon does not know the coast-line (being in the 
habit of seeking deep water as soon as it reaches the sea 
in its outward journey) and so enters the first river-mouth 
it meets with, which often happens to be the same. 

The Fraser, it may be remembered, is an exceptionally 
swift-flowing river ; yet salmon will swim up it at an 
average rate of forty miles a day — a pace which they can 
increase to nearly two hundred in calm water. 

Having at length reached the shallower parts of the 
stream near the source, the fish choose their spawning 
grounds from the sandy river-bed, plough up the sand 
with their snouts, working all the while against the 
stream ; for if they worked with their heads down-stream 
the water, running into their gills, would choke them. In 
the furrow thus dug they deposit their eggs, carefully 
covering them again with gravel. 

By this time their appearance has undergone a curious 
change ; they have become thin and flabby and, if eaten 

61 



SALMON-FISHING AS AN INDUSTRY 

at such a time, would be unwholesome if not poisonous. 
The females have become almost black ; the cheeks of the 
males are striped a red-gold, the body covered with the 
same tint, and the lower jaw strangely elongated. 

The spawning has occupied about a fortnight, at the 
end of which time the fish lie about in the stream taking 
the return journey by easy stages, till their strength is 
recruited. Meanwhile the ova lie undisturbed, covered 
up till about the end of the following March, when they 
may be said to be hatched and have become " fry " ; tiny, 
ugly things, pale brown, crossed by a few grey marks. 
The fry will remain in the river for perhaps another year 
and, by then, they have become grey-green on the back 
and silvery below, are nearly six inches long, and are 
known no longer as fry but as "smolt. 11 

After two or three months in the sea they reappear at 
the river-mouths weighing from three to four pounds, 
which weight rapidly increases as they ascend the stream. 
At this stage they are called " grilse. 11 Grilse remain up- 
stream till the next winter, when they spawn and hence- 
forth are dignified by the title of salmon. 

The bulk of the American salmon comes from two 
rivers — the Fraser and the Columbia, and from a huge 
land-locked, natural harbour — Puget Sound, which, a 
hundred miles long, runs southward from Juan de Fuca 
Strait into the State of Washington. Thus the salmon 
fishery of that quarter may be said to be divided almost 
equally between ourselves and the Americans, Canada 
having the Fraser, and the States the Columbia ; while 
the fish that leave the mouth of the Fraser become 

62 



SALMON-FISHING AS AN INDUSTRY 

American property if they follow the southern current 
down into Puget Sound, Canadian if they turn north- 
wards into Queen Charlotte Sound. 

There is little hope for the fish when they swim south- 
wards, for, as may be seen from a map of Washington, 
Puget Sound is a natural salmon-trap on a very large 
scale, having but the one outlet, and that split up by a 
small island ; and it is doubly delusive on account of its 
great depth, which leads the fish to suppose that they 
have reached the open sea. 

The fishing, which lasts about five months, begins in 
April, and, in the Sound, is done chiefly by means of 
trap-nets, consisting of a wall of netting, sometimes double 
with a narrow space between the two. These are moored 
across current or are let down from platforms in the 
quieter parts of the harbour. 

In proportion to its size the salmon is one of the 
strongest fish in creation : therefore only a stout net will 
hold him ; the meshes of such nets are made of what is 
known as Barbour's twine, a single thread of which would 
hold a hundredweight and a half. 

The trap-net is set late in the afternoon and left down 
all night, and the fish, swimming with the tide, go 
straight at the net, which, well weighted below, hangs per- 
pendicularly ; small fish will be allowed to pass through 
the meshes, but the larger ones soon find that where the 
heads will go the shoulders will not follow ; they can 
proceed no further and, naturally, as soon as they try to 
withdraw their heads, the cord slips itself under one of 
the gills and they are " unavoidably detained " henceforth. 

63 



SALMON-FISHING AS AN INDUSTRY 

Next day comes the hauling up, which is done by cords 
or levers ; in the case of moored nets the catch is hauled 
alongside the boats from which the nets were shot, but 
traps are pulled straight up to the platform from which 
they have been lowered, and are left hanging while the 
net is cleared ; the fish as they are taken out are heaped 
in boxes, sprinkled with salt, and taken ashore for drying. 

Before leaving the Washington fishermen, we must 
look at some of the work which they share with the 
Oregon men on the Columbia River. Between Astoria at 
the mouth of the Columbia and Portland, sixty miles 
inland, is another valuable salmon ground ; here the 
seine, which has been briefly described in Chapter II, is 
used in addition to the gill-net. As will presently appear, 
the seine, even when used for little things like ancho- 
vies and pilchards, is a weighty apparatus to draw ashore; 
when it contains salmon it is almost ponderous enough to 
call for steam-power. 

The leaded net having been shot in a half-circle from a 
couple of small boats, the tow-lines that are fixed to the 
two edges are carried to the bank ; as the seine has prob- 
ably been shot across stream, the rope attached to the 
edge nearer the bank is naturally shorter. This one is 
tied down as soon as it is landed, while the longer line is 
hauled very slowly inwards, in such a manner that the 
farther edge or wing of the seine is made to describe a 
curve, and until the two wings are in line with the stream 
and the tow-ropes of equal length again. During this 
time many of the fish which have been going towards the 
sea have come in contact with the net and, in their con- 

64 



SALMON-FISHING AS AN INDUSTRY 

fusion, have been swept round by it ; and, before they 
can escape, it appears to them that they are walled in on 
every side ; the real fact of the case being that the left 
wing of the seine has now been pulled round to where 
the middle was at first, and the right wing has cut off the 
retreat up stream. Well for those that have the sense to 
see that so far escape is still, in reality, as possible as it 
was at first, for the net has but changed its position. 

But now the chances of freedom have begun to 
diminish, for the left-hand tow-line being now crossed 
over the right, the men on the bank begin to pull in two 
different directions till the half-circle has become a whole 
one. Above the net there is no escape, for the upper 
edge is buoyed on the surface with bladders or corks, and 
now that the edges are together, every step taken by the 
haulers is lessening the opportunity of flight via the 
bottom. At last the seine-weights touch the mud, the 
salmon are trapped beyond all hope of freedom, and 
such a crowd of prisoners is there that the combined 
efforts of the three or four men, who could easily tow it 
while it was a floating concern, can now scarcely move 
it an inch further. But two or three stout dray-horses 
are in waiting; a rope or chain connected with the tow- 
lines is hitched to them and the net-full drawn up high 
and dry. 

A little higher up the river a very curious form of trap 
is in use — the fish- wheel, which is shaped and worked just 
like an ordinary water-mill wheel, and over which the fish 
are swept into a staked enclosure ; but most of the up- 
river fishing is still in the hands of the remnants of the 

E 65 



SALMON-FISHING AS AN INDUSTRY 

Indian tribes. These catch the salmon more for their 
own consumption than with a view to selling, though 
some of the younger men make a good living by the sale 
of their catches in the towns. Some of them use a kind 
of landing-net, which they dip in front of any fish which 
may come near enough to the surface. 

But the spear is the more scientific and — among the 
young Indians — the more popular implement. When you 
get a couple of hundred miles up the Columbia it is full 
of rapids, and at the foot of any one of these is the happy 
fishing-ground of the natives. During the upward and 
the downward migration the redskins, with light spears, 
some tethered, some free, sit in their birch canoes and 
watch for the jumping or the dropping of the salmon. 
The accuracy with which these fellows aim is extra- 
ordinary ; some will stand and throw harpoons at the 
curved, glistening bodies as they shoot through the air ; 
others, more deft, will spit them as they rise or fall, never 
leaving hold of the spear. 

The Fraser fisheries are carried on in much the same 
way as those of the Columbia, but a word or two ought 
to be said about the Canadian river-mouth fishing, which 
is done by moored gill-nets. The work connected with it 
makes the river-bank fishing seem very safe and easy, for 
it is done in small, two-manned boats, and often in as 
choppy a sea as the Pacific can boast — which just here, 
almost within the sweep of the Japan kuro shiwo current, 
can be very ugly when it likes. Here you may see a 
couple of thousand small boats — for at least that number 
is employed in the British Columbian fleet — tossing about 

66 



SALMON-FISHING AS AN INDUSTRY 

in Queen Charlotte Sound or Hecate Strait, setting or 
hauling up nets, the only outward and visible sign of 
which (while they are down) is a moored buoy. The full 
nets, on being dragged to the surface, are towed ashore or 
to larger craft, others being left in their place. 

When the fish have been taken to land, whether from 
sea or river, sorting and cleaning begin. Doubtful or un- 
sound fish are thrown aside with the waste ; indeed, so 
plentiful are the salmon that only the pick of them need 
be saved ; and, when it comes to the boiling, only the 
prime parts cooked. Those for drying and smoking are 
taken to a special warehouse for the process, which will 
last some weeks ; the others are boiled, often on the river- 
bank itself, and are then handed over to Chinamen, by 
whom practically the whole of the canning is done. 

The Scandinavian fisheries, too, are profitable and 
splendidly managed. An English fisherman once told me 
that the Norwegian fishers were " the frightenest people " 
he had ever seen, but the statement is libellous — or, at 
any rate, untrue ; for they are hardy fellows with older 
sea traditions than our own and, whether working in the 
sheltered fjords or in the open sea, accept the dangerous 
side of their trade as part of the day's labour. Though as 
business-men they are keen enough, there is a suggestion 
of romance about work done amid some of the most ex- 
quisite scenery in the world, that is somewhat lacking 
where the ultra-practical salmon -slaughter for dollars of 
North America is concerned. 

Here the river salmon-grounds are largely let to British 

67 



SALMON-FISHING AS AN INDUSTRY 

sportsmen, so that the business part of the fishing is done 
mainly in the fjords and at the river-mouths. 

How should a salmon know the difference between a 
river-mouth and long, narrow openings into the land such 
as the Sogne and Hardanger fjords, which, from the 
open sea, look exactly like estuaries ? He doesn't, until 
he has explored such openings ; and this is a work of 
time, for the Sogne Fjord is "all arms and legs. 11 Thirty 
miles down it widens, basin-shaped ; a little further on, 
a river-like opening runs up into the land on either side 
and, beyond these creeks, are five others, two of them 
nearly thirty miles long, very narrow, and winding away 
into the Jotunfeld group, so that there is nothing but 
salt water to distinguish them from short mountain 
rivers. And not always that, for little streams of fresh 
water empty themselves into one or two of these, and 
are not infrequently used as spawning-grounds. 

The narrower and more ramified fjords, then, are even 
more effectual salmon-traps than Puget Sound, for by the 
time the fish that have escaped netting on their entry 
from the Atlantic have finished their researches, they too 
have become a prey to the snares and nets laid for them 
in other parts of the opening. 

For mid-fjord and open-sea fishing the Norwegians 
employ the same kind of seine as that used in the 
Columbia River, though a good deal smaller, and worked 
by a few small boats, which tow the gradually closing 
net into the shallows for cleaning. 

But a seine is a valuable article, not to be dragged 
haphazard against rocks that, in less than a minute, 




Stereo Copyright, Undenvood &• U. London and Ne- 

Salmon-Netting in Norway 

This huge stand is fixed on the shore of the Sogne, the biggest of the 
Norwegian fjords. 



SALMON-FISHING AS AN INDUSTRY 

would tear it to shreds ; and both shores of the Sogne 
Fjord are girt with such rocks, which at high water are 
treacherously hidden ; so that to sweep the fish ashore 
as in river work would be impossible. Here, then, some 
other contrivance is called for, and the Norwegians supply 
the deficiency by means of a trap peculiar to themselves. 
A very rough, narrow-gangwayed pier is built out from 
the beach, generally inclining upwards, so that to walk 
to the far end of it is like going up a ladder. The gang- 
way ends in a broad platform, and from one of the two 
sides a net can be lowered. A gill-net — weighted, or tied 
to the stanchions that support the platform — is sunk 
from one of the sides, its lower edge reaching to the 
sand, its upper covered at high water, but visible as soon 
as the tide has run out. It is weighed up at intervals 
and cleared from the platform or from the boats below. 

While we are in the neighbourhood, we must take a 
peep at the salmon-fishery as worked by the Lapps and 
the Finnish peasant fishermen. 

The Lapps use spears ; also a small and very elementary 
seine, and do their fishing from tiny, skin-covered canoes. 
Before the boats go off, the men keep a careful eye round 
for the sea-swallows, or the " luck-bringers," as they call 
them ; small marine birds that, for some reason or other, 
elect to follow the outward or inward course of the salmon, 
and so are infallible guides to the fishermen. Where 
they fly the boats follow ; and so tame are the birds, 
that many will take scraps of fish from the men's hands. 

The Finns go in for trapping ; making a form of weir 
which, at least in the last hundred years, has altered in 

69 



SALMON-FISHING AS AN INDUSTRY 

no particular, for the traveller Acerbi describes just such 
a contrivance, writing in 1801. Across the mouths of 
the streams and small rivers they erect a palisade, extend- 
ing from bank to bank, leaving only a small opening. 
Between the posts, bushes and branches are thrust down, 
and so the fish in their inland migration are forced to 
pass through the single opening. Beyond it is a three- 
sided net or moored seine, the middle of which is 
elongated, folded, and made to lie flat. At intervals of 
a couple of hours the net is lifted out bodily by men 
standing on either bank, cleared, and put back. 

We must now notice such of the British salmon-fishing 
as does not come within the scope of the next chapter. 

A fish at once so valuable and so plentiful would, if left 
to the tender mercies of the public, have long ago been 
extinct in these islands. Only legal protection could 
save it ; and from the signing of Magna Charta to the 
present day, Sovereigns, Parliaments, Committees, and 
Commissions have been busy drawing up and enforcing 
regulations for the prevention of ruthless and indis- 
criminate salmon-taking. Yet in spite of artificial breed- 
ing, such as that carried on in the Tay, the salmon fishery 
has decreased in recent years, partly on account of the 
fouling of waters by land drainage and factories. With- 
out going into tedious details it is sufficient here to say 
that the law as it stands has fixed a close time for the 
fish, has forbidden the use of what are called fixed engines, 
i.e. permanent salmon-traps, and insists upon the registra- 
tion of all nets. 

70 



SALMON-FISHING AS AN INDUSTRY 

The close season, whether for nets or rods, varies slightly 
in different parts of the country ; but for nets it may 
never be less than 154 days; and no fresh salmon taken 
from any part of the United Kingdom may be sold 
between September 3 and February 1, and none exported 
between September 3 and April 30. Heavy penalties are 
attached to the taking or selling of salmon, either im- 
mediately before or immediately after spawning. 

For the further protection of the fish, a weekly close 
time has been settled of from forty-two to forty-eight 
hours of each week-end in England, thirty-six in Scotland, 
and forty-eight in Ireland. 

Another legal point worth noting is as to the proprietor- 
ship of the fish. In England they are common property 
as long as they remain in the sea, and while in the rivers 
they belong to the great landlords ; but in Scotland the 
sea-salmon, found between the shore and a mile beyond 
low-water mark, belong to the Crown or those who hold 
from the Crown. 

The North Country fishing is done with a kind of seine 
called a sweep-net, which the men shoot from small boats 
(cobles). In towing ashore, the net is brought in half- 
moonshaped instead of circular, and swiftly instead of 
gradually. These nets are the only ones allowed in 
estuaries, but others are used for shore-fishing and for 
English and Scotch deep-water work. The stake-net, as 
it is called, is found on various spots on the coast south of 
the Tweed, and comes perilously near being a salmon-trap. 
Two parallel rows of stakes covered with netting are placed 
between the high- and low-water marks in such a manner 

7i 



SALMON-FISHING AS AN INDUSTRY 

as to serve as a channel up which the fish swim with the 
current till they are driven, through openings at the end, 
into a " court " or enclosed net, whence there is no escape. 

The catching done in deeper water is by stow-nets or 
" bags," which are sunk from smacks, and are like those 
which some of the Scotch fishermen use in the estuaries 
for mackerel, etc. In shape there is little to distinguish 
the " bag w from the ordinary trawl-net ; it has a beam 
as described in Chapter III, and is shot in a somewhat 
peculiar manner. When the boat is ready to drop the 
net, she is hove-to, and a couple of bridles which are 
attached to the mouth of the net then have their free 
ends fastened to the anchor which, on being dropped, 
helps to sink the net, and eventually moors both net and 
boat. In this way the mouth of the net is held com- 
fortably open for the fish to swim into ; and, as has been 
already shown, their intelligence is seldom equal to the 
task of showing them a way out again. 

All English and Irish salmon-nets are taxed, the rates 
ranging from £3 to £20 ; in Ireland up to £30. 



72 



CHAPTER VI 
FISHING AS A SPORT 

Angling — Salmon-fishing— Tackle — Ireland and Norway — Piscatorjit, 
non nascUur — Casting — A real bite— A long spell of hard work — 
"Sulking" — Gaffing — Fishing in the Jotunfeld — High jumpers — 
To America for sport— The tarpon— Tarpon-tackle — A nasty sea 
— A big leap— Towed along — Fairly hooked — Sharks ! — Other 
sport. 

A LTHOUGH this book deals chiefly with the fisheries 
L\ which are important industries, space must be 
found for a few pages on the subject of fishing 
as it is undertaken by amateurs. 

If there is an angling that is the lazy man's sport — an 
excuse for spending tranquil hours in pleasant scenery — 
there is also an angling that requires undivided attention, 
perseverance, skill, endurance, and often physical strength, 
and those who devote themselves to it may justly rank 
as higher-grade sportsmen, the equals and often the 
superiors of the deer-stalkers. 

Salmon-fishing comes under the second class ; in fact 
it stands well ahead of all other branches of angling. 
From the details given in the last chapter it will have 
been seen that this fish spends the greater part of its 
time in rivers, and that much of that time is taken up 
with spawning. The close season for rod-and-line salmon- 
fishing does not begin till two months after that for 

73 



FISHING AS A SPORT 

netting, though it ends at the same date; ninety-two 
days is the minimum. As many salmon do not spend 
more than two or three months out of the twelve in the 
sea, the angler has about half the year wherein to pursue 
his sport. 

Two typical salmon countries are Ireland and Norway, 
though their rivers have little in common, for those of 
Ireland flow through a country that, in comparison with 
Norway, is flat and even, and they have very little of the 
mountain-torrent about them. Norway, on the other 
hand, is a land of strong-current rivers, often marked by 
waterfalls and cascades, where only the strenuous fisher 
will dream of angling. Scotland as a salmon country has 
been discussed in the last chapter ; for sport most men 
prefer it to Ireland. 

Salmon tackle varies much, according to the use that is 
going to be made of it. Are you going to fish from a 
boat on a lake, or from the bank of a river ; or are you 
prepared to don thigh-boots and be almost washed off 
your feet by the torrent, and possibly get a box on the 
ears from a jumping salmon ? 

The rod used is generally seventeen or eighteen feet 
long, with ashen butt, the two middle joints of hickory, 
and the top one of a tough, elastic West Indian wood, 
commonly known as lance-wood. The line, which, of 
course, may be of any length, is made of specially pre- 
pared oiled silk, or of a mixture of silk and horse-hair ; 
the casting-line — usually about nine feet long — is of twisted 
gut, and tapers towards the end. One angler will carry 
fifty yards of line, another a hundred ; for boat-fishing 

74 




Salmon-Fishing for Pleasure in a Highland River 



FISHING AS A SPORT 

most men will take a couple of hundred. The same with 
baits ; will you have a fly — and, if so, of what sort ? — 
a spinning-bait, a prawn, a minnow, a lob- worm, or a 
cockle ? Many anglers prefer a small, sober-coloured fly ; 
but in the Irish rivers you are almost sure to find a large 
and gaudy red-cock hackle, ribbed with gold, with wings 
of drake's, woodcock's, or mallard's feathers, set very wide 
apart. But there are special considerations that, in the 
main, determine the question of the sort of fly that it will 
be best to pin your faith to ; the time of year, the depth 
and degree of clearness of the water, and many other 
varying circumstances, not forgetting individual prefer- 
ences ; every man who has fished for several years should 
be the best judge of what suits him personally. 

All the Irish rivers are more or less salmon-yielding ; 
so are all the fresh- water loughs that are the source or 
the outlet of rivers — Neagh, for instance. The Shannon, 
which is so fertile in salmon as almost to rival some of 
the North American streams, has rapids below Lough 
Derg ; many of the smaller streams, too, have their 
" salmon-leaps," enticing enough to the fisherman who 
cannot get as far as the more exciting Scandinavian 
grounds. The fishing in both countries is now almost 
entirely proprietary. 

A successful salmon-fisher is made, not born ; nor can 
he become one by reading books on the subject. For the 
beginner who has grit in him there is always hope. Let 
him serve his apprenticeship to an old hand and, with 
a little common observation and a good deal of patient 
practice, the learner will at last become a fisherman. 

75 



FISHING AS A SPORT 

True, the talk about having "an angler's eye" is not all 
cant ; but generally the man who is observant over the 
things of everyday life will be so over his sports ; in- 
tuitive knowledge alone never yet caught a salmon, 
though with luck added it might. 

The complete salmon-fisher is the man who knows 
properly where and how to throw his fly, how to control 
it when it is in the river, how to hook the fish when he 
comes within reach, and finally how to manage and play 
him till he is landed or brought within gaffing distance. 
In throwing the fly, accurate judgment of distance is 
very necessary, and this again is largely a question of 
practice. In bank-fishing the angler, holding the rod in 
both hands, the left some little distance above the winch, 
the right below it, carries rod and line in an easy, gentle 
sweep over the left shoulder, till his left arm is raised in 
a line with his body, and he feels that the line is stretch- 
ing behind him in the air ; then, as though he were going 
to hit something with his rod, he brings it smartly for- 
ward, and this, neatly and properly done, the forward 
progress of the rod being checked at the right moment, 
has the effect of dropping the gut-line lightly on the 
water with the fly as near as may be to the desired 
position. If he happens to be fishing from the left bank, 
the positions of the hand and body as just given will be 
reversed. 

For many reasons the salmon-angler will fish against 
the current ; chief among these being, first, that, as already 
stated, the fish can only lie with their heads pointing up 
the stream, and therefore cannot see the angler when he 

76 



FISHING AS A SrORT 

is behind them; second, the salmon-fly, being usually 
large and heavy-winged, would, if carried along by the 
current, topple over and look unnatural ; whereas, 
properly guided up stream, it deludes the fish into the 
belief that it is some gaudy creature swimming spas- 
modically against the tide. Therefore, the moment the 
fly touches the water it is pulled round without delay into 
the line of the current. 

Next, the fly must be made to show itself to its best 
advantage and in all its glory. The rod is gently raised, 
and the fly, rising with it, has its possibly ruffled plumes 
smoothed down to its sides by the pressure of the water 
above it ; then, lowering the rod again just as carefully, 
the angler sinks his fly once more ; and this time the 
water resistance being under it, the fibres of the wings 
are spread open in a natural manner, displaying the 
brilliant colouring of the fly, which is now in a condition 
to beguile the first salmon that comes within sight of it. 

Henceforward the conscientious angler has no thought 
to bestow on temperature or scenery or hunger or fatigue ; 
eye and thought are both riveted on the graceful silvery 
creature that is following the fly. He has heard — as 
who has not? — of the lucky fisherman who once took, 
with small trout tackle, a salmon in the Shannon that 
weighed over forty-five pounds, and that required five 
hours 1 playing before it was exhausted. There are salmon 
weighing over fifty pounds in this river and, by the help 
of the gods, he means to catch one of them. 

Talking of weight, it must be borne in mind that the 
age of the salmon is no guarantee for its size. There are 

77 



FISHING AS A SPORT 

some Irish rivers in which ten pounds is a good weight 
for the adult fish ; there are others, the Shannon, the 
Suir, and the Blackwater, for example, Avhere even grilse 
attain that size. The weight of the fish depends mainly 
on the length of time that he is content to remain in the 
sea, and on the sort of food in which he indulges while 
there. Undoubtedly he has spells of greediness come 
over him from time to time, but he does not always 
choose the most " frame-forming " food. The stomachs 
of those taken from the sea are often found to contain 
eels and other fish, though those of fresh-water salmon 
rarely show anything but digested food, which seems to 
point to the fact that, while in the rivers, they eat more 
sparingly and at more lengthy intervals. 

Now let us suppose that a salmon has taken the bait, 
for, if bent on it, he will assuredly have it sooner or 
later. Unlike most river fish, he will rise over and over 
again to the same fly, seldom leaving it till he has taken 
it ; but, if he should happen to be only partially hooked, 
the angler may as well say good-bye to him, as he will 
scarcely be likely to venture near the bait a second time. 
As soon as he is fairly hooked, the difference between 
the experienced hand and the learner shows itself very 
markedly ; the former keeps cool and watches his oppor- 
tunities, the latter will probably lose his head; though 
this unfortunate condition is not confined to the be- 
ginner, for some tried and mighty fishers will confess to 
experiencing a sudden fit of " nerves " whenever they 
hook a fish of any size. 

As soon as the fish has taken the fly the angler's first 

78 



FISHING AS A SPORT 

care is to see that he is properly hooked, and then to 
tire him out. The fisher gives him a minute in which to 
swallow the fly comfortably ; and then, with a subtle 
twitch, he fixes the hook firmly. What will follow is 
problematical. The fish, at the first touch of pain, may 
double himself up and spring into the air, kicking and 
plunging, to get rid of his tormentor ; he may rush about 
backwards and forwards as if possessed, not knowing 
which way to turn ; again he may, and probably will, 
dash up or down the stream for all he is worth ; in any 
case, "give him plenty of line, 1 ' say the authoritative 
anglers. Whatever course his unfortunate victim may 
choose to follow, the sportsman has now a good hour's 
hard work before him if the catch is of any size ; perhaps 
three or four hours. 

His excitement must be tempered by watchfulness and 
judgment and dogged perseverance. The fish is darting 
up or down the river at lightning speed, and the sports- 
man, utterly unable to control it, is meekly following. 
Suddenly, perhaps, it turns and courses at a similar pace 
in the opposite direction, thinking nothing about the 
costly tackle which it is jeopardizing, except to rid itself 
of it. At last it pulls up short ; it has found a pro- 
jecting bank on the other side of the stream. Here it 
can " sulk " at its leisure ; and it does, perhaps for an 
hour, till the exasperated fisher begins to long for a stout 
hempen cord with which to haul it in, hand-over-hand 
like a cod-fish. Tugs and jerks will not move it ; the 
only sign of life that it gives is an occasional start, and 
an unqualified and persistent refusal to be " wound up." 

79 



FISHING AS A SPORT 

The angler begins to speculate ; he may have hooked 
the traditional anvil or ploughshare (every Irish guide 
knows a man who once landed something of the sort) ; 
what is far more reasonable to suppose is that he has 
hooked a powerful and wily salmon which, unless closely 
looked after, may lie still till it has chafed the gat-line 
through against the stones. Desperate at the bare 
thought of losing a possible forty-five pounder, he nerves 
himself once more to the effort and, this time, the fish 
allows itself to be dislodged and drawn into mid-stream ; 
then, with new life, endeavours to spurt off up the river 
again. But, taking in the line, a little now and a little 
then, " putting the strain on " whenever possible, the 
angler at last brings the monster within reach of the gaff 
— if he does not actually land the catch, as his sports- 
man's amour propre bids him at least try to do. 

Even over the gaffing there will often be a keen 
struggle, for the fish has a trick of being just an inch or 
two beyond the reach of the hook, and the hapless keeper 
or other person to whom falls the duty of manipulating 
it, discovers that he can only do so by throwing one half 
of his body over the stream at the risk of finding the 
other half over-balanced by it. When he has at last 
succeeded in getting the gaff under the fish, he strikes 
swiftly up, fixing the hook behind one of the breast fins, 
or, if possible, under the gills; and then, by means of 
his feet, wriggles back and back till he and his struggling 
prey roll over one another to a safe part of the bank, as 
likely as not entangling themselves in the angler's line 
in so doing. 

80 



FISHING AS A SPORT 

Hitherto we have only considered the fortunes of the 
man who fly-fishes a river from the bank. Many sports- 
men would consider this tame work, preferring the ex- 
citement of wading waist-deep up a mountain stream in 
Norway that has no tow-path ; in the rocky beds of the 
Jotunfield streams or lakes, for instance, where the water 
is walled in by sharp crags, and cut off from the rest of 
the world by snowy mountain-peaks. Such beds suit 
salmon that are of a sulky turn of mind ; for they can 
lie between a couple of large stones, or in an unsuspected 
hollow that leads abruptly out of the shallows, and 
meditate to their hearts"' content. Nowhere, in fact, if 
they can help it, will these fish stop to rest on a smooth, 
shallow bottom, any more than they will remain in long, 
straggling streams that begin and end nowhere, as one 
may say ; a short, rapid, broken-bedded stream leading to a 
lake, or not far from the sea, is an ideal ground for them. 

In fishing among the rocks and sunken tree-roots, many 
anglers consider a mussel, cockle, or prawn a very killing 
bait. An unweighted line is cast into the meeting point 
of two currents formed by rocks that stand opposite each 
other, or into the shallows near a hole, and is allowed to 
be carried by the force of the water among the stones or 
over where the salmon lies in hiding. In all probability 
the fish will not be able to resist the temptation long, for 
the angler is offering it the kind of food on which it was 
wont to fatten while in the sea. All in a moment the 
line is jerked furiously and the salmon springs with all 
its force out of the water, drops again, and dives back 
among the hollows or stones. At such a time it behoves 
F 81 



FISHING AS A SPORT 

the sportsman to be very wide awake if he is not to lose 
the catch ; he must sneak every half-inch of line he can, 
and so proportionately reduce the chances of the salmon's 
tumbling across the slack of it in its fall ; for such an 
accident seldom fails to jerk the prisoner free again ; in 
any case, if it jumps up repeatedly, it is pretty safe sooner 
or later to free itself. 

But with all its changes and chances, and in spite of 
cold unspeakable and wettings that suggest rheumatic 
fever, the sportsman to whom the choice is open — Norway 
or Britain— will not hesitate to decide in favour of the 
former. 

Salmon-fishing is a sport full of excitement, but many 
people say there is another more exciting still. Since 
facilities for quick travel have increased, sportsmen have 
been diligently seizing the opportunity of fishing or 
hunting for game whose habitat is so far removed from 
their own homes that at one time the pursuit of it by 
Englishmen was only dreamt of when they happened to 
be "on their travels." A few generations back, to go 
fishing in Norway or Russia was looked upon as pushing 
sport to the limits of wicked waste of time, on account 
of the distance ; and a person who talked of going even 
to America for shooting, would have been regarded as 
a maniac. But all that is changed, and now the man 
who can afford the requisite time and money is allowed 
to plan a fishing-trip to the Gulf of Mexico and round 
about Florida Strait without having his sanity called in 
question by his friends. To run over to America to fish 

82 



FISHING AS A SPORT 

for the flying or jumping monsters that in past ages fell 
to the harpoons of races that the world no longer knows, 
has become as popular an amusement as an Indian tiger- 
shooting holiday was to our fathers. 

Among these American wonders the best known to 
twentieth-century folk is the tarpon, a salt-water fish at 
one time erroneously called the Jew-fish. (The Jew, it 
should be stated, is a creature much longer than the 
tarpon, and often three or four times as heavy.) He is 
a magnificent blue and silver monster, a close relative 
of the herring ; is from five to seven feet long, and may 
weigh anything from one to two hundred pounds. The 
body is covered with scales, some of them three and four 
inches wide ; the back fin is very high, with a filament 
behind, the eyes and mouth very large, the latter oblique. 
As food the flesh is of doubtful value. 

Like the salmon, it has the power of springing out of 
the water at will, though its method of doing so differs. 
In fact, it is often included among the flying-fish ; fish, 
that is, that on account of the extraordinary length of 
their breast-fins, are able to leap from the water and make 
some show of supporting themselves in mid-air for a brief 
period. If the tarpon does not strictly come under this 
zoological species, it at least spends its days in the com- 
pany of fish that do ; for though its home is well above 
the Tropic of Cancer, the reader will, no doubt, remem- 
ber that the Gulf Stream, which leaves the Gulf of 
Mexico via the Strait of Florida, gives almost a tropical 
character to that part of the Atlantic and its inmates ; 
for the temperature of the water at the surface is 81° F. 

83 



FISHING AS A SPORT 

To talk of catching a hundredweight fish with rod and 
line sounds rather absurd, till we come to look closely into 
the sport. The tackle required is a stout eight-foot rod, 
a line made of linen, from one to two hundred yards long, 
and a hook baited with a bit of fish. Obviously there is 
no scope here for the angler who wants to loaf at his work. 
The fishing is done from light rowing-boats, generally at 
low water, and, by the more earnest sportsman, at night, 
for then the tarpon more readily seizes the bait. 

The season is a short one, lasting but two months 
(April and May). Perhaps there is no reason why it 
should not begin a little earlier, but after May, apart 
from such minor inconveniences as mosquitoes, sharks, and 
excessive heat, tropical cyclones are liable to come and 
trouble the waters, sending heavy storm-tides ashore and 
making things uncomfortable even for large ships. At 
the best of times it is unwise to venture far in a boat 
without a guide who knows the current, as well as the lie 
of the fish. Some men risk going out alone, anchor their 
boat and wait for a possible bite, taking their chance of 
what may happen when the fish begins to kick, if indeed 
they ever hook one. 

Experienced tarpon-anglers maintain that there is little 
to learn in the sport ; that the man (by the way, many 
ladies go tarpon-fishing nowadays) who has nerve and 
muscle and some notion of managing his winch, possesses 
all the stock-in-trade required. And sure it looks easy 
enough ; all you have to do is to sit on a thwart, or in a 
chair, with the butt of your rod supported by a holder 
slung from your belt. At least that is the first part of the 

84 



FISHING AS A SPORT 

programme; in the second you may get a bite. When 
this occurs the tarpon does not leave you in doubt for long ; 
for, as often as not, as soon as he is hooked you hear a 
splash and a rustle, and the giant springs up into the air 
to a height of eight if not ten feet, shaking and clattering 
its gills as though with fury, jerking with all the force of 
its hundred or hundred and fifty pounds to rid itself of 
the hook ; then, before you are quite clear as to what will 
be your — and his — next move, falling back on the water 
with noise enough to deafen one. Did you ever see, and 
hear, a very fat swimmer who had not the faintest notion 
of diving, throw himself from a high diving-board ? The 
tarpon's drop is just such an ear-splitting crash, and woe 
to the oar whereon it shall fall, or the boat either, for 
that matter ; for if an eleven-stone man falls into a light 
boat from a height of ten feet, the odds are in favour of a 
breakage or a swamp ; and an eleven-stone tarpon, though 
not exactly " a like cause," will probably produce a like 
result. 

Night-time may be better for the sport, but the person 
who wants to get a good insight into it, and who has 
never seen the marvels of that quasi-tropical sea, will go 
by day, taking with him a guide who knows what to do 
with a pair of sculls, and who will keep his " fare " as far 
from other boats as is convenient. To have your own 
fish, or one that is jumping for refuge from submarine 
enemies, drop on to your head is quite bad enough ; you 
do not want to be troubled with other people's. Perhaps 
your first cast is a lucky one ; you are in deep water with 
a tide that is beginning to run in smoothly and gently ; 

85 



FISHING AS A SPORT 

and the sudden, rapid rush of the line over the multiplier 
(a winch whose inner cylinder revolves three or four times 
to one turn of the handle) tells you that you have made a 
strike, even if the fish fails to jump. Let him have line — 
a hundred yards if he wants it ; and let him tow you as 
far as he feels inclined. 

Suddenly he makes a leap, and you had better obey to 
the letter the guide's injunction to "hold on"; for, when 
the fish kicks, there is reasonable probability of the rod's 
being unceremoniously jerked out of your hands. You 
have no time to notice other smaller flying fish that 
whizz past your ears ; someone in the next boat has just 
fired a gun, and you do not even speculate as to whether 
you were the target or no, for you are carried away by ex- 
citement and a ten-stone fish. The tarpon drops again, 
but springs up once more almost before he is down, 
tugging more desperately than ever. 

This time, however, he does not come up unaccom- 
panied. What are those things bobbing about where he 
has just left the surface ? Shark-snouts ; three of them ! 
You have no longer any need to wonder at that gun-shot, 
and at present you have not time ; you cannot even stop 
to weigh your own chances of finding yourself in the 
midst of those vicious-looking muzzles ; for, with a final, 
fruitless jerk, the tarpon signifies his acceptance of the 
inevitable ; drops, reduces his speed, and allows himself 
to be drawn alongside for gaffing — for only an experienced 
fisher will try to run his catch ashore. 

Then, when the excitement is all over and you have 
leisure to think of what might have happened, you 

86 



FISHING AS A SPORT 

decide not to put off your sport another year till the 
end of the season, when the sharks are coming close in to 
shore. 

Other exciting sport in this neighbourhood is afforded 
to anglers by Jew-fish, king-fish, gar-fish, and other 
strange creatures that leap or fly ; and, to harpooners, by 
the devil-fish, or whip-ray. 



37 



CHAPTER VII 
THE COD-FISHERY (I) 

The Breton " Icelanders "—Seeing the fleet off— A twelve-hundred 
mile voyage in a cockle-shell — Life on board — Iceland in sight — 
Cod-fishing — An average catch — A big catch in a calm — Cleaning 
and salting — Breaks in the monotony— Homeward bound. 

ONE may expect to see the cod in almost any part 
of the ocean ; it is always putting in an appear- 
ance ; we find it in the trawl, in the shrimp-net, 
even in the oyster-dredge. Perhaps there is no more 
popular table fish, for it is wholesome, digestible, satisfy- 
ing, and usually reasonable in price. So popular is it 
(even apart from its value as an oil-producer), that few 
southern countries can keep their markets supplied with- 
out going further afield than their own waters. Our 
Scotch and East Coast cod-fisheries are by no means 
inconsiderable ; yet our annual importation of cod is 
something enormous. 

The bulk of the world's supply comes from (a) the 
Iceland Banks, (b) the Newfoundland Banks ; and it is 
with these grounds that we shall specially concern our- 
selves in this and the next chapter. 

How is it, we may well ask, that, after so many 
centuries of fishing, the cod has not become a rarity for 



THE COD-FISHERY 

for which epicures would be prepared to pay fabulous 
prices ? For a thousand years the industry has been 
pursued pretty regularly off Iceland ; for four hundred 
off the American Banks ; yet, at the present day, the 
supply is most likely larger than it has ever been ; the 
fishery giving employment to 150,000 vessels and 700,000 
men. 

The reason is that the cod reproduces its species at a 
rate that is out of all proportion to that of most other 
fish. If the reader will bear in mind that one roe 
contains at the very least somewhere about six million 
eggs, he will see that there is nothing particularly out- 
rageous in the boast made by an old French fisherman of 
having caught five hundred cod with hook and line in one 
day of ten hours. 

The fishery off the Iceland coast is carried on by a few 
Danish, Norwegian, and British crews, but mainly by 
French, the season lasting all the summer long. The 
majority of the French boats taking part in the trade 
are from Brittany — broad-beamed, substantial-looking 
yawls, manned by the strongest and sturdiest fellows to be 
found in the country. Brittany, indeed, has its special 
hereditary Iceland fleet ; men whose fathers, grandfathers, 
and great grandfathers have, like themselves, worked on 
the Banks year by year from February to August or 
September, and who, from boyhood to old age, have 
never enjoyed a southern summer. 

For Brittany is a district of granite and moorland, 
where agricultural labour is at a discount ; and from time 
immemorial the inhabitants have been obliged to expect 



THE COD-FISHERY 

their harvest from the sea rather than from the land; 
and inasmuch as the proceeds of the sardine and herring 
fishery are insufficient to meet the needs of the population, 
it is not unnatural that the bolder fishermen — men into 
whose very blood the sea seems to have worked its way — 
should be willing to risk their lives in one of the most 
paying branches of their trade, even though it is carried 
on twelve hundred miles away from home, and even 
though that particular kind of fishing is attended with 
greater danger than any other. 

Twelve hundred miles of the Atlantic ! And in a craft 
that, by the side of a steamer (which itself requires ten or 
twelve days for the passage), looks like a toy boat ! Yet 
the light-hearted Bretons appear to see little to fear in 
the venture. In some cases they are buoyed up with 
their piety, and their trust in the Higher Powers ; in 
others, they feel secure in their belief in some little pet 
superstition of their own. Doubtless there is a good 
deal of fiction about the " dangers of the deep."" Perhaps 
most of us have a very exaggerated idea as to the 
number of seamen who are drowned in the course of a 
year ; nor is it to be denied that many of the deaths 
which do occur can be traced to carelessness or fool- 
hardiness on the part of someone or other. At the same 
time, there is unquestionably a large loss of life every 
season, and no fishermen contribute more to the sad list 
than the cod crews. 

Before the Breton fleet starts, the crews make every 
effort to invoke the protection of Heaven. If a boat is 
going out for the first time it must be solemnly conse- 

90 



THE COD-FISHERY 

crated by the parish priest. The smack, decorated and 
covered with sail-cloth or a tarpaulin, is blessed and 
sprinkled with holy water in the presence of the armateur, 
i.e. the owner, or the man at whose expense she is fitted 
out — and of the crew ; then follows the ornamenting of 
the cabin with religious and other pictures, a crucifix, or 
an image of La Sainte Vierge^ and — alack ! — paper 
flowers. This little function is followed by a meal of 
bread and jam, cake, and wine; and, later, by what 
Englishmen would call a sing-song. 

The final preparations for departure in February or 
March are picturesque in the extreme, and, by contrast, 
the start of an English fleet seems prosaic and unroman- 
tic. The stores, the barrels of salt, the lines, and the 
handkerchief-wardrobes have all been taken aboard ; the 
boats are gay with flags ; the tugs are lying off the quay, 
waiting to tow them out to sea, two, three, or four at 
a time ; and the men are now only waiting to receive the 
Church's benediction, and to bid farewell to the relatives, 
friends, and sweethearts who have flocked down to the 
harbour. From a little temporary altar set up on the 
quay, the priest, preceded by enfants de chceur bearing 
lighted candles, incense, and holy water, carries the Sacred 
Host round the harbour ; the fleet is solemnly blessed, 
good-byes are said, and the boats are soon off on their 
long voyage. 

With fair weather, the " Icelanders " have two periods 
of comparative leisure to look forward to ; the journey 
out and the journey home. The crew consists of seven or 
eight hands, and an Iceland yawl can be managed 

9i 



THE COD-FISHERY 

moderately comfortably by three men and a " mousse, 1 ' or 
cabin-boy ; therefore the fishermen can take " turn and 
turn about.' 1 The spare time is filled up with gossip, 
draughts, dominoes, or cards ; with sorting and inspecting 
the fishing-lines, or washing and mending of clothes. 
Laundry- work aboard is a very simple matter. Stockings 
and shirts are rubbed and wrung in a bucket of water and 
hung on the boom to dry; blouses or "jumpers" — the 
short, coarse linen dress worn over the jersey — are spread 
out on deck, liberally soused with pails of water, and 
scrubbed with the deck-brush. 

The days pass quite quickly enough, each seeming 
colder than the one before as the vessel gets further 
north. England, Ireland, and Scotland have been left 
behind long ago ; the Faroe Islands are passed without 
even being sighted ; the boat has come within the region 
of the " midnight sun." Often rain, fog, or snow en- 
velops each smack, perhaps cutting it off' from sight of 
its nearest neighbours. The men have packed away their 
woollen or skin caps and donned their sou'- westers — head- 
gear picturesque enough to the artist and the landsman, 
but abhorred of all sailors, for that the heat of them 
makes a man bald before his time. The Bretons have 
given up expecting calm weather- for the next month 
or two ; at 60.0 N., 20.0 W., they know little about 
smooth seas ; the boats are nearing the Iceland and 
Greenland Banks. Away to the east a few Norwegian 
whalers are pitching and heeling ; now and again, from 
behind or in front, sounds the hoot of a steamer, bound 
from Copenhagen, Leith, and the Faroes for Reikjavik ; 

92 



THE COD-FISHERY 

sometimes a hollow, uncanny shout comes across the 
water from a neighbouring smack : " Who are you ? 
Is that the Rose ? How do you like this, mon vieux ? " 

Suddenly, perhaps, the mist clears, and the rocky, 
cheerless coast of Iceland comes in sight. Bearing north- 
west, the boats make for where the sea seems smoother, 
yet is bubbling and boiling and seething with white foam. 
Now the lower western point of the island is on their 
right ; if the air were a little clearer the outline of the 
nearest of the hospitable fjords, whither the fishers must 
retire in exceptionally dangerous weather, would be visible ; 
as it is, all that can be seen is the lava plain south 
of Reikjavik. Further still to westward, the little corner 
peninsula is almost out of sight again ; the Banks are 
reached at last — the home, for the next five months, of 
the cod-crews. 

There is bustle enough on board now : sail to be taken 
in, salt-tubs to be dragged out of the hold, knives to be 
sharpened, hooks and lines to pass final examination. 
To-morrow fishing will begin. 

At first the catches seem poor ; either the season has 
not really begun, or the men are out of gear and have not 
got back to the old working groove yet. Codding is not 
work for weaklings. On the Iceland Banks the muscular 
labour is even greater than on the Grand Banks, where 
the fishing is mainly done from small boats ; here the line 
must be hauled up every time on to the deck of the smack. 
A cod sometimes measures three feet from tip to tail ; 
it weighs from half to three-quarters of a hundredweight 
— often nearly a hundred pounds. Think what it means 

93 



THE COD-FISHERY 

to haul up two or three hundred of such burdens a day ; 
or, at busy times, to work for fifteen hours with only 
a short break for dinner, pulling up, on an average, one 
fish every three minutes ! Unless unusually stormy 
weather forces the boats to seek shelter for a time in the 
natural harbours of the Breidifjord or the Faxafjord, you 
may say that the fishing never stops as long as the season 
lasts, except when in fairly slack times, the crew meet 
over the cabin fire for an hour's chat and smoke before 
one half " turns in " and the other half starts on the 
night work. 

While the catches do not rise much above the average, 
a couple of men can be spared to do the cleaning and 
salting as the fish are drawn up. Watch the fishers at 
their work. The main-sail has been pulled round to lee- 
ward, and on the opposite side of the deck are four line- 
men and two cleaners, the former standing about ten feet 
apart in order to avoid fouling, i.e. getting one line 
entangled with another ; the latter squatting on the deck, 
waiting for the others to give them something to do. 
That " something 1 '' will soon come. The long, plummeted 
lines, scarcely the thickness of a blind-cord, slip merrily 
through the men's fingers ; at last one slackens — it has 
touched bottom — then a second. A third does not reach 
the bottom at all ; a hungry cod, swimming downwards 
from a little below mid-water, has spied the bait — prob- 
ably a bit of cuttle-fish — and, the next moment, the 
fisherman shouts proudly : " Good ; I've got the first 
fish!" 

" You think so ? " asks a stronger, older man, as he feels 

94 



THE COD-FISHERY 

the little vibratory " nubbling ,1 that experience has taught 
him is a bite. With a loud laugh, he begins to haul in 
like fury, hand over hand, the sodden line falling in snaky, 
oval coils between his sea-booted legs. The cleaners lean 
over the side, laughing, too, at the friendly rivalry between 
the fishers, and watching with a sort of gambler's interest 
to see whose fish will come up first. 

Plomb! Splash! The stronger man has won after all, 
though he had to pull from the bottom. Up comes a cod 
as big round as his thigh, " kicking" and struggling and 
wriggling; as it falls on the deck ; and before the hook is 
disgorged another, equally big, lies by its side ; and in 
less than a minute a couple more are jerked out of the 
water and left near them. Down go all four lines again, 
but the cleaners calmly go on finishing their pipes ; they 
want to see something of a heap before they begin ; hard 
work will come quite soon enough without going to meet 
it. The minutes drag on ; the four fish have became 
eight, and the eight sixteen. Some are lying motionless, 
others are gasping and flapping their tails as if in feeble 
protest ; poor creatures, their flapping days are nearly 
over. 

The cleaners have to bestir themselves now. Near 
them is a barrel of salt, the head of which has been 
knocked in ; each scoops from it sufficient to make a good 
heap which he deposits at his side, and the task of salting 
begins. Every fish is carefully ripped up, gutted, and 
well coated inside and out with salt ; then laid out flat, 
and stacked one above another in an ever increasing heap. 
Presently one of the crew will come along with cases, into 

95 



THE COD-FISHERY 

which the piles of fish are carefully packed with yet more 
salt, and all will be safely stowed within the hold. 

By mid-season the fish have increased in size and seem- 
ingly in number. Naturally no two weeks 1 catches are 
alike. In most fishing fleets, no matter of what sort, you 
will nearly always find one skipper who is more knowing, 
or has the reputation for being more knowing, than his 
fellows. " Show me where old So-and-so fishes," says one 
of the crew, " and I'll tell you where to get a good haul."" 
Wherever he goes, others will try to follow. Some of the 
more independent, however, are content to roam over the 
otherwise neglected ground — and as often as not it is 
they who get the haul, and not the knowing ones or their 
followers. We know, of course, there are old stagers so 
shrewd and so observant that they know, almost literally, 
every square yard of the ground ; and such men will catch 
a boat-load while others get nothing. But cod are not 
like oysters or sponges ; they want to move about, and at 
times move very swifty ; so that the boat that toils in 
vain for several hours may at any moment have a shoal 
of fish under her, so eager for prey that they could almost 
be caught with the naked hook. 

Once in a way, as summer advances, the sea round the 
Banks condescends to lie still for a space. The wind drops ; 
there is a dead calm ; the sunlit water looks as if it could 
not be rough if it tried, and grows so clear that you can 
almost see to the bottom. One of the men pauses in his 
fishing to jerk a remark over his shoulder to the skipper, 
who has deserted his useless helm. The " patron " looks 
over the bulwarks, turns away again rubbing his hands, 

96 



THE COD-FISHERY 

and shouts to the two or three lads or men who are 
resting : " Now then, come on ! No skulking ; it's harvest- 
time ! " The tired fellows know what is meant, and every- 
one pulls himself together with a good will. Ejacula- 
tions of joy or surprise escape them as they look over 
the gunwale and mechanically uncoil the lines, or bait the 
hooks. For down below are thousands, nay millions, of 
full-sized cods, with steely backs and silver bellies, dash- 
ing up and down in line, or lying motionless and looking 
upwards as if they had come to be fed. 

There is no talk of cleaning or salting now ; that 
must all be done afterwards. Every man throws in his 
line, knowing that long before the hook reaches the bottom 
he will feel the sudden little shock that announces a 
capture ; and this must go on hour after hour, perhaps all 
through the night, in spite of stiffening muscles and 
aching backs. At last the shoal thins down ; half the 
crew falls out and, by way of rest, sets to work on the 
gigantic mound of fish ; obliged first to kneel, then stand, 
then stoop, in order to keep themselves awake ; 

" Achin' for an hour's sleep, doziri' off between," 

as Mr. Kipling hath it. Already the day is dawning, not 
as we understand dawn in England, for it has not been 
really dark all night ; but the ghostly yellow light is 
growing of a whiter shade. Presently the sky will redden, 
the dun-coloured clouds will part, and it will be morning. 
Meanwhile the wind has got up ; the halliards rattle 
petulantly and there is a mournful creaking and sighing in 
the shrouds. A summer storm is coming on ; maybe only 
G 97 



THE COD-FISHERY 

a squall ; maybe one of those terrible tempests that, 
before the fleet can run towards Reikjavik, will have put 
an end to more than one of the plucky little Breton 
yawls. But, be it squall or tempest, it will interfere with 
the fishing for the time being, so it is no wonder that the 
men have been anxious to profit by the recent calm. 

There is another aspect, too, of that calm and the 
ensuing storm. They are incidents — events coming in 
relief of what would be, to most people, a dismal same- 
ness. Even a fisherman is human and likes a change at 
times as well as his neighbours ; and a lull, or a storm, or 
a fog, or an extra large or small catch are the only changes 
the " Islandais " can look for, except the periodical visit 
of a Danish or French steamboat, which brings him his 
letters and his newspapers, his medicines, tobacco, and 
fresh water. 

A few more brief calms, another fog or two — happily 
the fog does not interfere much with the fishing — and the 
men begin to count the days, then the hours, that must 
elapse before they start for home. The boats that have 
had the luckiest season are the first to go ; some, less 
fortunate, stay as long as the late August and September 
squalls will allow them. Often there is a sort of under- 
stood race for home ; for the boats that are the first in 
will get the best market for their fish. Most of them will 
probably sail straight away for Bordeaux and the neigh- 
bourhood, where prices may be better than in the large 
northern towns, buy their salt for the coming season and 
then turn homewards, each member of the crew with 
perhaps a thousand francs (£40) in his pocket, his share 



THE COD-FISHERY 

of the sale of the fish. Similar ceremonies to those which 
attended his going out arc being prepared for him at 
home ; and for some weeks after the first crew has landed, 
his little native town will be en fete. Then for a few 
months he will settle down to the more peaceful coast- 
fishing, and by February will be quite ready to set out 
again on just such a voyage as the last. 



99 



CHAPTER VIII 
THE COD-FISHERY (II) 

The American cod-fishery — The Newfoundland Banks — Dory work — 
Hand-line fishing— Drawbacks to it — French trawling — No piracy 
allowed — Pulling up the trawl — Clearing and rebaiting — Cleaning 
and drying — The gill-net — Its special utility — Its mechanism. 

NOW as to the American cod-fishery, an industry 
far more important and extensive than that dis- 
cussed in the last chapter, and pursued on the 
largest cod-grounds in the world — the Grand Banks of 
Newfoundland. These, forming one immense submarine 
table-land, lie more than fifty miles to the south of Cape 
Race, more than three hundred to the east of Cape 
Breton Island, and are covered with water that varies in 
depth from ten to a hundred and fifty fathoms. 

Sealing, the industry only second in importance to 
codding in Newfoundland, finishes about the middle of 
April, and within six weeks of that time the ground is 
crowded with cod-crews, drawn from almost all nations 
under heaven. Naturally the first to arrive are our own 
hardy colonials from various parts of Canada, with a 
sprinkling of Frenchmen from Miquelon and St. Pierre, 
— two little islands belonging to France, which lie a few 
miles north-west of the Banks. Before June is far ad- 

ioo 



THE COD-FISHERY 

vanced, these have been joined by large fleets from the 
United States and even from France and Holland, and 
for the next five months these men, drawn from every- 
where, will fish together more or less amicably, for the 
Banks are a sort of "No-man's land," beyond the juris- 
diction of either Great Britain or the States. 

In the height of the season there will be something like 
seventy-five thousand vessels on the grounds — not includ- 
ing steam-tugs, carriers, and the like — of from 50 to 200 
tons burthen ; many of them schooners (two-masters, 
with square fore-topsail and fore-top-gallant), but the 
majority of them cutters and yawls. Each of these 
vessels carries half a dozen or more small boats — dories, 
as they are termed — from which most of the fishing will 
be done. And therein lies the danger of the work ; for 
the dories are often obliged to travel a great distance 
from their ship, and are only too easily swamped through 
carelessness in overloading, or lost in the darkness or the 
fog. 

The most popular quarters of the district are Flemish 
Cap, Brown's Bank, and St. George's Bank — the last- 
named, situated in the far south-east corner of the ground, 
producing the finest cod-fish in the world. 

Until lately two methods of catching were in vogue ; 
by hand-lines and by the French trawl. For a great 
number of years the second system struggled hard with 
the first and older plan, and, as will be seen from the last 
chapter, many French crews still prefer the hand-line. By 
the time French trawling had gained the sway among 
British and American fishermen, a third contrivance — the 



THE COD-FISHERY 

gill-net — had arisen ; and a few of its advocates main- 
tain that in course of time it will completely supersede 
line-fishing, except where inshore work is concerned ; a 
statement which affords great amusement to the older 
fishermen, for they know better. 

As has been already said, the Banks hand-line fishery 
differs mainly from that carried on by the " Islandais " in 
that it does not usually take place from the deck of the 
smack. Each member of the crew has his own cock-boat 
or dory and, having sculled himself out some distance, 
with his tackle and his bait-store, throws in his line. From 
a sportsman's point of view, what could be finer? The 
little boat is being tossed in any and every direction ; 
often the fish come up as fast as ever the angler can haul 
them in ; often, again, there is the increased excitement 
of irregular bites, when our man will catch two fish in 
three minutes, and then has to wait three hours before he 
gets another bite ; then succeeds again, by fits and starts, 
pulling up sometimes one per minute, sometimes one 
per hour. Further excitement comes at the moment of 
" landing"" the fish. True, a cod is not a tarpon, to jump 
upon you unawares or pull you out of your boat or tow 
you along, the moment he is hooked ; but he is a heavy, 
muscular beast, all the same, and in a boat that was 
never intended to hold more than two men, you can't 
" wrastle " with a thing that is in a very great hurry to 
get away, and that turns the scale at three-quarters of a 
hundredweight, without meeting with an occasional 
upset. 

But there is a less sporting view of the matter to be 

102 



THE COD FISHERY 

considered. A storm rises suddenly just when the boat 
is well-nigh full of fish — representing the whole of a 
man's day's work. A slight slip, or stumble, or roll on 
the part of the fisherman — just the least little bit of 
awkwardness that, in a somewhat larger craft, would pass 
unnoticed — and the hapless dory capsizes, no matter 
how carefully the fish have been stowed. At least there 
is a day's pay thrown away and — God help the poor 
boatman if, encumbered as he is by oilskins and thigh- 
boots, he is not man enough to reach and right his boat 
again ! 

Or there is that awful fog for which the Banks are 
celebrated, caused, so the geographers tell us, by the 
meeting of the warm water of the Gulf Stream with the 
current which is called the Cold Wall, and is really a 
stream of melted Arctic ice brought down by the 
Labrador current. The unfortunate dory-man is not only 
cut off from sight of everything, but, if he has finished 
his fishing, will soon be chilled to the bone through 
inaction ; for he can do nothing but sit still, listening 
anxiously to the sirens and hooters of larger craft that 
may be in the vicinity, and wait, either till the fog lifts 
or till he is run down by a passing steamer — unless he 
has the luck to drift towards some friendly smack that 
will take him aboard. 

Yet, despite such drawbacks as these, it is easy to see 
why hand-line codding dies hard ; take the year through, 
an individual fisherman can earn more money at it than 
by the other means mentioned, though owners and 
master-men may gain less ; for the dory-man, being alone 

103 



THE COD-FISHERY 

in his boat, has not to share the proceeds of his catch 
with a companion. 

French trawling, on the other hand, requires a crew 
of two ; one to attend to the tackle, the other to scull 
and " make himself generally useful. 1 ' In many respects 
it is only a development of the old Scotch and French 
long-line fishing. From each smack about half a dozen 
dories go off' in the morning ; arrived at the part where 
the trawls are set, the men can see a number of small 
tarred kegs floating, that look like the ordinary buoys 
to which boats are moored, but for the fact that each 
of them carries a tiny flag which is of some distinctive 
colour, or else has a name or number painted on it. 
With the same keenness of perception that enables them 
to recognise their own vessel among the thousands that 
drift or lie at anchor on the Banks, the boatmen quickly 
pick out certain buoys which they know to be theirs. 

And here let me say that, among the fishermen of 
civilised countries, there is surprisingly little piracy ; i.e. 
interference with, or robbery of, other men's tackle. Of 
course if a Frenchman or a Yankee " goes and puts " his 
lobster-pots on a Canadian ground he must take his 
chance of the trouble that ensues. But, generally speak- 
ing, the fisherman, when not restrained by honesty or 
fear (and, on the Grand Banks, to pull up someone else's 
gear is to get a knife into your ribs sooner or later) is 
held back from this deadly sin by his superstition that 
if he steals another man's catch or tackle " it will come 
home to him." 

To return to our dories — a very close observer might 

104 



THE COD-FISHERY 

notice that the buoys go in pairs, in some cases each two 
being joined by a thin line, and the distance between 
the two being anything from a hundred and fifty yards 
to a quarter of a mile. On reaching these the dories 
separate, one boat — or perhaps two — rowing towards 
either end of the connecting line ; the others lying 
between, and waiting to bear a hand as soon as they 
are wanted. One of the men responsible for the tackle 
now leans over the gunwale, seizes the buoy by its iron 
ring and drags it aboard. It may now be seen that, from 
each of the kegs — another line — the "buoy-line 11 — runs 
downwards, and on this the men at either end begin to 
haul for all they are worth, as though they were weighing 
up an anchor. In point of fact, that is just what they 
are doing ; for presently the intermediate men make a 
grab at something under water with hands outstretched 
and, everyone pulling together, up comes a line equal in 
length to the connecting cord, with a little anchor 
fastened to each end of it. From this line, branching 
in all directions, are others only a few feet long, each 
bearing a hook — from two to three hundred of them in 
all ; and more than half of these have caught a cod. 
This is what is meant by French trawling. 

Very speedily the dorymen release the fish, packing them 
neatly away in their boats. Sometimes there will be more 
than they can find room for, and these must either be left 
on the hooks or thrown back into the sea. Another 
method of clearing the tackle is, as in the seine-netting, 
to tow the whole catch back to the vessel. The coast 
fishermen of Miquelon and St. Pierre now use no other 

105 



THE COD-FISHERY 

system than the French trawl, going out daily from the 
shore to tow the laden tackle home and to set fresh lines. 
Many of the Canadian mainland fishers do the same ; 
and their inshore catches are so large (although the cod 
are comparatively poor) that they manage to keep the 
whole of the West Indian market supplied. 

As soon as the hooks are cleared, the lines have to be 
rebaited and sunk again. The favourite bait on the New- 
foundland ground is what the Frenchmen call a capelin — a 
kind of haddock or pigmy cod. As river anglers are well 
aware, fixing "live-bait 11 is not a task to be approached 
lightly or carelessly ; yet the speed with which the cod-men 
bait hook after hook is simply incredible. When the task 
is finished the main line of the trawl has a most weird 
appearance ; fancy a cord, nearly a quarter of a mile in 
length, from which, at intervals of about five feet, hang 
short ends of line, each terminating in a fish rather smaller 
than a herring. 

With very great care the trawl is sunk again, the 
weight of the two little anchors being sufficient to carry 
it to the bottom ; the buoy-lines are made fast to the kegs 
again. If we were able to see through the water to the 
bottom, we could now make out an immense four-sided 
linear figure, perpendicular to the plane of the sea ; every- 
thing has been made ready once more for a new catch. If 
the boats are very heavily burdened they will now row 
back to their schooner or yawl to be hauled up and emptied 
before proceeding to clear the next trawl. The lines just 
set will be left for at least twelve hours, sometimes even 
twenty-four, before they are pulled up again. 

1 06 



THE COD-FISHERY 

The cleaning and salting processes are the same, no 
matter what means of catching may be in use. As soon 
as the evening meal on the smack is finished — a meal 
usually consisting of fish-pie or " tinned rations "" with tea, 
coffee, or cider — boards are laid out on trestles below 
decks, thus forming a long table, and all hands take a 
share at the splitting and cleaning of the day's catch. 
Boats coming from a long distance will stow their fish 
away as we have seen the Iceland Bretons do. Those that 
have put off from Newfoundland, however, will either run 
into shore periodically with their cargo or else hand it 
over to carriers ; for the Newfoundlanders have not only 
to salt, but also to dry their fish. The drying is a labor- 
ious though very simple process, consisting in laying the 
opened cod on sloping wooden stages in the sun. If 
figures and statistics were not rather tedious, the reader 
might be interested to know that Newfoundland alone 
exports five and a half million dollars - ' worth of dried cod 
every year, in addition to cod-oil to the value of about 
half a million dollars. 

Now for the gill-net. I have left it till last because it 
cannot be considered as a feature of the June to November 
season. Generally speaking, it does not come into use till 
about a month after the line-fishing for the year has 
finished. The cod, though one of the easiest fish to bo 
taken with hook and line, is not readily caught by a net, 
except at spawning time when it is more unobservant and 
heedless of its surroundings. It has a rooted objection to 
a net, and a countless shoal swimming at top speed would 
wheel like lightning on coming within a few feet of one. 

107 



THE COD-FISHERY 

For more than a hundred years the Canadian fishermen 
have firmly believed that, during the breeding season, 
the cod are short-sighted. They maintain that when the 
fish go down and bury themselves in the mud at spawning, 
Providence supplies them with a special film-like growth 
which covers the eyes, thus protecting them from particles 
of grit and sand that would otherwise blind them ; and 
this membrane, they say, does not disappear till about 
the end of March. Now, as from November, when line- 
fishing ends, till the middle of March, when sealing 
begins, was a slack and often moneyless time for the 
fishers, some of them began to think how it could be 
turned to account ; how fish, which would not be per- 
suaded to leave the bottom where they had a plentiful 
supply of cockles and shrimps for food, might still be 
ensnared against their will. The gill-net is the result. 

A stranger, sailing over the ground in winter, would 
assume that French trawling was going on as usual, for 
the flag-bearing buoys are still in evidence ; and, if he 
took the trouble to pull one out of the water, he would 
find a buoy-line running down from it, differing from the 
trawl-lines only in being considerably stouter. Moreover, 
if he took a dive to the bottom, he would see that the 
gear is held down by a couple of small anchors, just as in 
the other method. Or, again, he might see only one keg 
instead of two, for often the second buoy -line is made fast 
to a boat lying at moorings. 

But the two little anchors that will sink a set of lines 
are not sufficient to weight this sort of tackle, and to 
help it to preserve its perpendicular with a strong current 

1 08 



THE COD-FISHERY 

running ; and if we pulled up a buoy-line, we should see 
that it is weighted at regular intervals by three large 
glass balls. At the lowest of these, which would be 
nearly down to mid-water, the single line becomes two ; 
one running down to the anchor, at an obtuse angle ; the 
other continuing in the same straight line with the buoy- 
rope till it reaches a fourth ball which hangs within a 
few feet of the bottom. Forming the third side of a 
triangle, another line runs upwards from the anchor to 
this fourth ball and, beyond it, to a fifth, placed at the 
upper corner of the net. This fifth one is the first of a 
long horizontal row which is threaded upon the whole 
length of the upper edge of the net, whose other end 
meets the second set of anchored guide-lines in precisely 
the same manner as given above. The net thus hangs 
perpendicularly, with but little freedom to move backwards 
or forwards, its lower edge lying along the mud, and 
kept there by another row of glass balls, each of which 
hangs from a separate short cord tied to the bottom edge 
of the net. 

One might think that, at such a time of year, the net 
must needs lie a long time before it is anything like full. 
On the contrary, it fills very speedily, and can be pulled 
up any time within twelve or fifteen hours ; for the fish 
will come out from the mud as soon as they are hungry ; 
and, considering their vast numbers, the odds are that 
wherever the net may fall, some hundreds of them, too 
occupied with family cares to notice where they are 
going, are bound to swim into the snare laid for them 
in the course of a few hours. To guard against taking 

109 



THE COD-FISHERY 

young fish, the meshes of the net are so wide as to allow 
all but the most full-grown to pass harmlessly through 
them. But woe betide the parent fish if they once get 
their heads into the meshes ; by the time the cords touch 
them where they are roundest and plumpest, they can go 
no further, and the first backward movement drives the 
thread well under both gills, and then all hope of freedom 
is gone for ever. 



CHAPTER IX 
THE OYSTER 

Where the oyster is, and is not, found — The Essex and North Kent 
" flats " — Development — Restocking the beds—" Brood" — A day 
of a dredger's life — Description of the dredge— Hauling up — The 
oyster's companions in the dredge — Its enemies — Measuring up 
the "wash" — The collecting boat — Other kinds of oysters- 
Typhoid ! 

IT is not possible to say for how many centuries the 
oyster-fishery has existed ; before the Christian era had 
begun, Roman epicures were turning up their noses at 
Italian oysters because those from Gaul and Britain were 
finer and more succulent. Certainly in the North Sea, the 
English Channel, the Bay of Biscay, and various parts of 
the Mediterranean, dredging in one form or other has 
been practised from time immemorial. 

The fishmonger's price-list leads us to suppose that 
oysters are found in Scotland, Colchester, Whitstable, 
Holland, and America ; but, as a matter of fact, they are 
taken in very great numbers almost everywhere. There 
are, it is true, some few parts of the ocean where we 
might dredge for ever without catching one. Professor 
Huxley tells us the reason, viz. they cannot live and 
breed in water containing less than three per cent, of 

in 



THE OYSTER 

saline constituents ; and he quotes the Baltic, where the 
tasty little creatures are almost unknown, as an instance. 
But equally there are particular quarters of the ocean- 
bed — the Bay of Arcachon, for example, or the Essex 
and North Kent " flats " — that scientists say are specially 
adapted to oyster-culture ; and, as the last-named is the 
better-known ground, as well as one of the oldest and 
most important in the world, we will take a glance at the 
kind of work that goes on there. 

The law forbids the sale of English and Scotch oysters 
between the middle of May and the beginning of August, 
partly to prevent undue clearing of the beds, partly 
because the oyster is at that time more or less poisonous, 
— " sick," as the fishermen call it ; it is spawning. The 
spawn, or " fry," falls in tiny particles on the stones, 
shells, and rubbish at the bottom of the sea and soon 
develops into small white protuberances: "spat"; these 
in their turn become little bivalves which are found lying 
independently, or with one shell tightly stuck to some 
foreign body. Such baby oysters are called " brood," and 
more than half of the fisherman's time is given up to 
collecting them. 

Oysters are dearer than other shell-fish for pretty much 
the same reason that pheasants are dearer than rabbits ; 
they are a proprietary article, and their rearing is a 
somewhat expensive matter. The beds from which the 
fully developed fish are taken belong to companies or 
private individuals, and are severely marked off' by buoys. 
But such preserves are very small when compared with 
the immense surrounding space on which anyone may 

112 



THE OYSTER 

fish ; and it is from the outside spaces that millions of 
brood oysters may be obtained. 

It stands to reason, with the vast number of native 
oysters that are eaten or exported within a twelvemonth, 
that the beds from which they are drawn require to be 
continually restocked ; and this is done by the owners 
luiying of the fishermen the brood which they have 
gathered from common ground, and laying it down in 
their own " parks," where it will gradually come to 
maturity. 

Brood-getting, then, is the chief occupation of the 
fishermen in such a place as Whitstable ; supplying not 
the fish-market, but the fish-breeder. While the close 
season is on, and perhaps two or three days a week during 
other times, the dredgers are to be seen going off in their 
cutters for a task that will occupy from eight to twelve 
hours, and during that time they will go ten and even 
twenty miles away. AVith no quay and no tugs, the 
smacks are dependent on the tides for getting out to sea ; 
thus, if the tide is ebbing at — say — one in the morning, 
the men must be away within an hour or so of that time, 
though — as in winter — they may not be able to begin 
work till six or seven, for their task cannot be performed 
in the dark. 

Arrived at a likely spot, a trial dredge or two will be 
thrown over and left to trail for a few minutes ; then pulled 
up and examined. If the sample be promising, work 
begins at once ; if not, up goes the fore-sail again and the 
smack sails away towards better ground. In Chapter II, 
for the sake of convenience in classification, the dredge, 
h 113 



THE OYSTER 

(drag) — generally pronounced " drudge " — has been in- 
cluded under the head of nets ; but a more minute 
description of the instrument may not be out of place 
here. The front meshes, we saw, are composed of string, 
and the back of stout wire. The wire meshes are linked 
on to a slip of iron about two feet long, the " bit " ; 
while those at the front are lashed by a cowhide thong to 
a slip of wood similar in size to the bit, the "catch- 
stick " ; and at either end, connecting the two, is a " side- 
stick," half the length of it. Thus we have a deep net 
with a rectangular opening, that will hold as much as 
a good-sized portmanteau. The side- and catch-sticks are 
but loosely hinged at their ends, so that the front and the 
sides of the mouth are comparatively free in their move- 
ments ; but each end of the bit is fixed to a bar of iron as 
thick as a kitchen poker and a little less than three feet 
long. These two bars, or "limbs,'" bend back till they 
meet in a point, two and a half feet from the bit. As 
stays to the limbs are two more bars, one running down 
from the meeting point, halving the angle, till it joins 
another at right angles, which connects the limbs half 
a foot above the bit and parallel to it. All told, then, 
you have an iron triangle, bisected from apex to base, 
with its two sides produced till they meet a second base, 
the bit. At its apex is a stout iron ring through which 
the lowering rope is tied, and below this is a projection, 
the use of which will be seen directly. 

An oyster-smack crew consists of three or, at the 
most, four men. As soon as a good spot has been found, 
the boat is brought round to the wind and left to look 

114 



THE OYSTER 

after herself, and the men arrange themselves to wind- 
ward, one at bow, a second amidships, and a third near 
the stern. The minutes being so precious to the fisher- 
men, everything has been made ready while the boat 
was still travelling ; the dredges fastened to their warps ; 
a little wooden bucket placed near each man to hold the 
brood ; and no time is wasted now in throwing in the six 
dredges, two to each man. The upper end of every 
warp, or coil of rope, is secured by being tied to a stout 
block which lies on the deck, while, to prevent more rope 
being paid out than will reach to the bottom, a short 
bridle or regulating cord is tied from a cleat inside the 
bulwarks to the part of the warp that is just above 
water. 

Henceforward everything depends on the wind ; if there 
is not enough the smack will not move, and the dredges 
will be scraping thereabouts the same spot over and over 
again ; if too much, she will rock and drift to such an 
extent that no sooner have the men found a good "pitch" 
than they are washed away from it. Give them a light 
breeze and they are happy. 

The pulling up and landing of one full dredge requires 
little experience, but a good deal of breath and muscle ; 
the pulling up of twenty or thirty per hour demands con- 
siderable staying power, and hands as hard as leather. 
The rope, a good inch in diameter, must be hauled 
straight up, hand over hand ; to pause for breath is to 
risk being pulled overboard, or, at least, to have the rope 
jerked out of the hands by the tremendous weight at the 
end of it. 

"5 



THE OYSTER 

When at last the top ring comes above water the worst 
of the strain is over ; to the beginner it has seemed as 
though the rope would never end, though in reality the 
depth is nothing as compared with deep-water fishing ; 
the " flats " of the Thames estuary are not, as a rule, 
covered by more than five to fifteen fathoms of water, 
even at high tide. The use of the limbs and the little 
iron projection — the "heel" — is now apparent. The final 
pull has brought the ring well above the bulwarks ; but 
it goes without saying that weight in water and out of it 
are two widely different things ; out of the water a loaded 
dredge is sometimes so heavy that only a strong man can 
lift it ; and the wet, slippery, sloping deck is not the 
standing-ground that even he would choose for the task. 
Instead, therefore, of lifting the catch bodily over the 
side, the fisherman continues to haul on the rope till the 
projecting heel hooks itself on the gunwale and he is 
released from the strain. The rest is a mere question of 
knack ; seizing the ring, and using the limbs as a lever, he 
drags the iron frame over till the net rests on the gun- 
wale, mouth towards the deck ; and by a deft twist of the 
right limb empties the whole, then flings the dredge back 
into the sea. 

And what a collection he has brought up from Davy^ 
locker ! Such an one as would make the mouth of a 
naturalist water if he saw it for the first time, and as 
might incline the curio-hunter to poke about in the heap 
on the chance of finding treasure. A complete list of 
the objects, other than young oysters, that appear in the 
dredges in the course of a day would fill a page of this 

116 



THE OYSTER 

book ; everything from dead men's bones to fossil remains; 
from a lump of rock weighing half a hundredweight to a 
silver pencil-case ; the young, and sometimes the old, of 
twenty different kinds of fish ; mussels and whelks by the 
gallon ; a score of varieties of seaweed. I have a six- 
teenth-century tobacco-pipe that was landed in this 
manner ; and myself once pulled up a lively sole weigh- 
ing over a pound and a half, in a dredge. 

Before we discuss the brood that has come up, we must 
specially notice two objects that have not been included 
in the collection outlined above, but which will almost in- 
variably be found wherever there are oysters ; to wit : the 
"five-finger" (star-fish) and the dog-whelk. These are 
the young oyster's deadly enemies against which, poor 
wretch, he is powerless. The star-fish grips him with its 
terrible arms and suckers, and eats him up, shell and all. 
The dog- whelk goes to work in a more subtle manner ; 
having fastened himself on to the shell, he patiently bores 
a hole through it with a sort of drill wherewith Nature 
has provided his mouth ; and, having effected an entry, 
gradually demolishes the soft body within. You may see 
scores of empty brood shells neatly perforated in this 
manner. 

Strangely enough, the dredgers wink at the depreda- 
tions of the star-fish ; if they do not want to take a bag- 
full of them home for the garden (they are splendid 
manure for cabbages) they throw them back unharmed 
into the sea. Yet not many dog-whelks are ever allowed 
to escape ; the heel of a sea-boot or a bang with a stone 
speedily cuts short their days. They can easily be dis- 

117 



THE OYSTER 

tinguished from the common whelk by the white and 
purple or yellow and brown shades of the shell, as well 
as by the lengthy spines with which the latter is covered. 

From such a motley heap, then, the brood has to be 
sorted, or " culled " — for the Kent fishermen still use the 
good old word ; and here is labour more irksome and, in 
the long run, more tiring, than the hauling up ; for the 
men are down on their knees, or bent double over the 
heap, gathering up the little shells faster than the 
stranger could pick them out with his eye. Brood shells 
are of a pearly white till they are about a year old, and 
at that age their size is anything from that of a sixpence 
to that of a halfpenny ; older brood are of a delicate 
pink on the round valve, and brown on the flat. They 
may be said to increase in diameter about an inch each 
year, up to the age of three ; after which time the growth 
is more a matter of the shell's thickening, and there is 
not necessarily any great difference in circumference be- 
tween a three-year-old oyster and a fully matured one. 

In a very few minutes each dredger has singled out 
from his heap everything that he wants and has thrown 
it into his bucket ; and now, with a couple of bits of 
board he rakes together all the mass of weed, stones, and 
rubbish preparatory to shooting it through a port-hole. 
Before he throws the heap away there is one more item 
of it that it will not be going away from our subject 
to glance at ; the sea-urchin or, as he would call it, the 
" burr, 11 for whose creation he firmly believes the Evil 
One to have been responsible. Most people are better 
acquainted with its shell-like skeleton than with the 

118 



THE OYSTER 

living creature itself; it is a greeny red, globular object, 
any size from that of a marble to a small orange, and 
looking exactly like a coiled-up hedgehog. According 
to the dredger there are three grounds of objection to 
it ; it pricks the fingers most painfully ; a prick from 
it is poisonous; it eats the oysters. Nobody who has 
handled one will cavil at the first statement ; the second 
is nonsense ; the third open to debate, for zoologists seem 
to agree that the urchin is a vegetable feeder. It certainly 
has a trick of getting in the way of the fingers while the 
brood is being culled, and a pleasant little habit of stick- 
ing one of its spines between the nail and the flesh — and 
leaving it there. So long as it behaves, the dredger 
shoots it overboard with the rest ; but should it prick 
him, the bystander will see that the savage is not 
altogether dead in our fishermen ; for the offending burr 
must be slowly hammered to death with a stone, or gently 
dropped into the cabin fire. You might tell the dredger 
that the urchin does not feel anything, has no evil in- 
tentions, and was not made by the devil ; and being the 
naturally courteous fellow that he generally is, he would 
not contradict you — till you were out of hearing. 

Now out through the port-hole are swept the pipe-fishes 
and sea-mice and the half-dozen or more varieties of crab 
— noticeably the ghastly spider-crab — with an avalanche of 
stones ; and the fisher hauls up his second dredge, empties 
it, throws it back, and sorts as before. If it is a lucky 
day with him, after a few such hauls he has filled his 
pail, emptied it into a larger one and started to fill it 
again. If you take the trouble to examine the contents 

119 



THE OYSTER 

of one of the pails you will find a curious mixture ; 
young oysters in clusters of two or three ; a stone or an 
old shell with as many as a dozen little ones adhering 
to it ; perhaps a few oysters that, in spite of the con- 
tinuous dredging, have by chance been allowed to come 
to maturity in their native beds. 

On a busy day the pails are soon filled again, and it 
becomes necessary to pack away some of the brood. The 
men gauge it very carefully before they empty it into 
sacks — it will be measured again by the buyer, but they 
like to know how much they are earning. 

"Two wash already!" A " wash" is five gallons, and 
will be bought by the cultivator for four shillings. On 
two wash, then, our three men have earned two shillings 
apiece, and the boat another two shillings ; if the owner 
is the skipper, so much the better for him. 

After a while it is seen that the supply of brood is 
dwindling ; the patch, over which the dredges are being 
towed by the gently drifting boat, is exhausted ; or 
perhaps only mussels are coming up — a sure sign that 
there is little brood about. Then the helm is unlashed, 
the boat puts about, and makes for another likely spot. 
Here, perhaps, the brood is more plentiful than ever, and 
very soon another three or four wash are put into the 
bags. But now the men are beginning to grumble ; the 
wind has dropped, and the boat scarcely moves at all, 
hampered as she is by the heavy dredges. There is just 
the hope that, though she may not bear six, she can yet 
manage three, so each man tries working with but one 
dredge. The plan answers perhaps, but the crew are only 

1 20 



THE OYSTER 

earning half as much as they otherwise might do. And 
maybe the tide has been flowing for some time already ; 
they have but an hour or so before they must put 
back. Happily the wind is getting up once more, and 
all six dredges are thrown in again. The men may well 
be anxious to make hay while the sun shines ; when they 
are not after brood they are either kept ashore by un- 
favourable weather, or are "oystering" at four-and- 
sixpence a day. Oystering, I may remark, is exactly the 
same process as brood-getting, but that the men are work- 
ing on a private ground and are rejecting everything but 
the fish that are ready for eating. 

At length, good luck or bad, they dare stay no longer if 
they are to get in before the tide turns again ; for very 
likely they are miles away from home. As they come in 
sight of the town we see the same kind of thing happening 
as we witnessed with the trawlers ; two of the men jump into 
the little boat, the sacks of brood are handed out to 
them and they pull rapidly away to a smack labelled 
" collecting-boat. 11 Round this are scores of little boats, 
their crews waiting to give up their catches and have them 
measured. In some cases however the catch is taken ashore 
to a sorting house. The brood thus procured will be re- 
planted in some special part of the oyster park, dropped 
down from smacks by the handful as if one were sowing 
seeds. 

This is an average day of a dredger's life in good 
weather. In winter-time he must necessarily earn but 
little ; the hours of daylight are very limited ; there are 
fogs about ; and, more, if a frost sets in, he can take him- 



THE OYSTER 

self home as soon as he likes and stay there till the thaw 
comes ; for frost kills the brood the moment it comes in 
contact with it, no matter how quickly the catch is stowed 
away. You can see the little oysters open of themselves 
as soon as they are taken out of the water on a frosty 
day. 

Hitherto we have dealt with but one class of oyster, 
but there are others that may be of interest. As 
youngsters, most of us have been told by our travelled 
elders that oysters grow on trees ; and we have had the 
uncomfortable feeling that we were being " chaffed.' 1 Yet 
we live to find out that in some parts of the world, such 
is the case ; in the West Indies, at the heads of inlets and 
natural harbours where the mangrove grows freely under 
water, oysters may be found by the hundred, clinging to 
the branches. 

There is an interesting point, too, relating to the colour 
of oysters ; those from Spain are red ; from parts of the 
Adriatic, brown ; from the Bay of Biscay and parts of the 
Channel, green; from the Red Sea, opaline and rain- 
bow coloured. 

There is, though not to the extent that once prevailed, 
a good deal of exchange in the matter of brood. In bad 
years — that is years when the fall of " spat " has been 
poor — brood has been brought over from Cancale or 
Dieppe or Arcachon, and planted in English beds ; 
similarly, though the Dutch have large beds off Zealand, 
they will buy young oysters of English fishermen to ripen 
in the grounds at Petten. In recent years the Australian 
beds have proved so fruitful that an attempt has been 



THE OYSTER 

made to transport brood oysters to Europe ; but so far 
the promoters of the scheme have not been successful. 

Dredging for oysters, and from boats, is not always 
necessary ; most of the American fish arc picked up from 
the beach like cockles. At Arcachon, perhaps the finest 
natural bed in the world, the tide goes out so far that 
what, at flood-tide, is a large bay, becomes at low water 
a vast sand-track, intersected, however, by narrow streams 
from two to seven fathoms deep. At the bottom of these 
streams lie some of the best oysters, and dredging can be 
carried on from land. 

The Arcachon fishermen have to wage war against 
what is called the whelk-tingle, as do ours against the 
dog-whelk ; and the Americans find almost as great a 
scourge in the oyster-catcher or sea-pie, a stork-billed 
bird that eats oysters as thrushes eat snails. 

One more word about the British oyster-fisherman. 
He cannot be brought to believe that oysters produce 
typhoid fever, and doubtless he would find medical men 
ready to back him up. According to his own account he 
has seen a man's head swell to the size of a bushel-basket 
through mussel-poisoning ; he has had his own hand in a 
sling for weeks, through being pricked by a burr ; he has 
seen someone else helplessly drunk, merely through eating 
a few red whelks ; he may even have seen the sea-serpent ; 
but never, never has he known of a case of oyster-typhoid. 
And surely he is in a position to know ! 



123 



CHAPTER X 

UNITED STATES FISH AND 
FISHERMEN 

The States fishermen — The "foreigners" — The spring mackerel- 
fishing — The "purse-seine" — Fishing by night — How the net is 
cleared — Shore-weirs— Line-fishing for mackerel — The herring — 
The mullet — A big catch — The "red snapper" — Other American 
fish. 

THE life of the American mackerel is a busy but not 
an enviable one, for it is passed in a futile effort to 
find a resting-place " between the devil and the 
deep sea " ; in other words, between the artfully designed 
coast-traps known as "shore-weirs," and the attacks of 
the sharks and blue-fish that lie in wait for him as soon 
as he flees into deep water. It is just possible that he 
might find a happy mean, if it were not for a third 
danger that pursues him in his flight from the coast, and is 
waiting to meet him on his return there to the fishing-fleet. 
For, all the way down the Atlantic coast of the United 
States, from Maine to Louisiana, are fishing stations, 
some rivalling in importance our Lowestoft or Grimsby, 
and catering for a greater population and a far wider 
area. 

The States fishermen might be divided into two classes : 

124 



FISH AND FISHERMEN 

foreigners, and " odd hands." In a new country one does 
not expect to see a fishing race, sprung from untold 
generations of sea-going folk, such as Britain, France or 
Denmark can show ; and but for the immigration of 
European fishing families, one might seek in vain for 
anything like a hereditary fleet. But when English and 
French, Swedes and Portuguese settled along the east 
coast of North America in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries, attracted by the tales of their sailors as to the 
prevalence of the cod, they went a long way towards 
endowing the new country with such a fleet as they had 
been accustomed to see at home. On Cape Cod, for 
instance, there is, to this day, a complete colony of 
Portuguese fishermen who still retain their own language 
and customs. All these different settlers, then, with 
Lascars, Coolies, and an occasional Chinaman, make up 
the " foreigners " ; while the " odd hands " are landsmen 
— labourers, negroes, etc., or their descendants, who have 
drifted towards the coast in search of work, and are 
looked upon with a certain amount of contempt by the 
more blue-blooded fisher-folk. 

Such of these men as are not engaged on the Banks 
fishery, may be found during March and April fishing 
for mackerel ; in the late autumn and winter for herring ; 
then, till mackerel-fishing begins again, for mullet. Their 
ground may be said to lie anywhere between the coast 
and a line parallel to it, fifty miles distant ; and, length- 
wise, between the Gulf of Mexico and the Bay of Fundy. 
Further north they dare not go except for mackerel — the 
only fish which they are allowed to take from British 

125 



UNITED STATES 

waters — or when they are making for the common ground 
further east. 

A favourite spot for the spring mackerel-fishing is off 
Cape Hatteras, where the water reaches a remarkable 
depth ; and here a fleet of yawls, and even schooners and 
brigs, is to be seen working day and night — really more 
night than day — as long as the shoals of mackerel remain. 
A large vessel is necessary, if only as a storehouse, for 
the catches are so enormous that only big craft could find 
room for them. 

The net used is a development of the old-fasioned seine, 
probably introduced by the French and Portuguese 
emigrfa, and known as the "purse-seine 11 ; it requires 
considerable depth of water and, like the trawl, a sandy 
or shingly bottom, free from rocks. As a rule it is single, 
i.e. a plain sheet of netting, with cords at top and bottom 
which will draw it together in the form of a bag ; some- 
times, however, it is pocket-shaped. To cause it to hang 
perpendicularly, the upper edge is buoyed with a cork-line, 
while the lower is weighted with lead ; it can either be 
moored to a couple of boats or anchored buoys, or it may 
be towed gently between two or more boats. 

The fact that mackerel are not essentially a bottom fish 
will explain why the work is more easily accomplished in 
the dark than by daylight. In the daytime the fish are 
rather shy of coming near the surface, with the result 
that only the lower meshes are to be relied upon as long 
as the light remains. By night it is different; a man 
standing at bow, or stationed at the mast-head, can easily 
follow the movements of a shoal, which, seeing nothing to 

126 



FISH AND FISHERMEN 

fear, swim hither and thither among the flept, uncon- 
sciously betraying their whereabouts by the phosphorescent 
track they leave behind. Following such a track with his 
eye, an experienced skipper can give directions to the men 
who are waiting to shoot the seine from the small boats, 
and can even tell when the net is in danger of being over- 
crowded. 

The clearing of the net is a case of " the mountain's 
going to Mohammed" ; not of the net's being brought to 
the ship, but the reverse. The moment the seine is full, 
the vessel pulls round alongside of it ; the cords are drawn 
up and hitched to the bulwarks, so that the whole catch 
is taken in tow ; and a fresh net is shot. If the crew are 
busy, the fish caught can stay where they are till morning ; 
then they are baled out of the purse at intervals, as 
occasion offers, and stacked below, to be taken ashore 
either immediately or when the call-boat comes round. 
The reason why the net is not hauled bodily on deck, as 
in trawling, is pretty obvious when we bear in mind that, 
at one shooting, the seine is sometimes found to contain 
as many mackerel as will fill a thousand good-sized barrels,, 

But what is the result of such enormous catches ? Year 
by year the mackerel-fleets find themselves forced to go 
farther and farther away from the shore ; for the spring 
fishing disturbs the shoals in their northward migration, 
causing them thereby to take a wider sweep from the coast, 
so that, in time to come, mackerel-seining must become as 
much an ocean-fishery as codding. 

The shark and his various amiable relatives are rarely 
the fisherman's allies ; yet, where American mackerel are 

127 



UNITED STATES 

concerned, they must be considered as such ; for one of 
them will pursue a whole shoal — swallowing a mouthful 
now and again as opportunity arises — for fifty and sixty 
miles, coming as close in to shore as he dares. It is then 
that the shore-weirs mentioned above come into play. 
They are of two sorts: shoal-(shallow)-water weirs and 
deep-water weirs. The first are simple enclosures made by 
walls of stakes, bushes, etc., into which the fish swim 
helter-skelter, on the " any port in a storm " principle, 
where they are either cut off from retreat by a sliding 
door of hurdles as soon as a big capture is made, to be 
left high and dry when the tide goes out ; or are baled 
out by the score as they come into the trap. 

The deep-water weir is considerably less primitive, and 
is composed of a series of net walls cunningly arranged 
so that entry is simple enough, but exit — to the dull- 
witted mackerel — a matter of impossibility. Parallel to 
the shore is one long sheet or wall of netting, buoyed and 
weighted like a seine ; from one end of this, running out 
into the sea at right-angles, is a similar wall, from a 
hundred and fifty to two hundred yards long; the 
''leader," as it is called. At the other end of the first 
net is a third wall, about a quarter the length of the 
leader and parallel to it, at the end of which is yet 
another, which goes more than half-way towards making 
the fourth side of a square, leaving, however, a good 
wide opening for the fish to come in at. Sometimes the 
fourth side doubles back, parallel to the leader, and has 
yet another net perpendicular to it, inside the square, 
making the beginning of a sort of key-pattern labyrinth. 

138 



FISH AND FISHERMEN 

When a shoal of mackerel in full flight from a shark 
encounters the "leader," it hesitates, wheels, and swims 
steadily alongside the net wall till it is caught in the maze 
prepared for it. But shore- weirs, take them how you may, 
are even more destructive to the fishery than the purse- 
seine, for hundreds of thousands of mackerel can be caught 
in the course of a few days ; and the sooner such a waste- 
ful method is entirely abolished the better. 

There is one more way in which the mackerel may be 
caught — again an importation from Europe ; that is by 
means of hook and line. All sorts of bait have been 
tried, but experienced mackerel-anglers say that none is 
so satisfactory as a bit of scarlet flannel, cloth, or ribbon, 
tapering downwards to a point. As there is no marine 
animal, so far as one knows, of which such bait could be 
an imitation, it may be assumed that this is yet another 
instance of the inquisitiveness of fish upon which scientists 
have so often remarked. 

Next in importance to the mackerel, where the States 
coast-fishery is concerned, is the herring ; and the catch- 
ing of it is one of the special industries of the shore 
people of Maine and Massachusetts ; but, as the next 
chapter deals specially with this fishery as carried on in 
Europe, we shall here only touch upon such points as 
are peculiar to the American branch of it. Gill-nets, 
such as we saw used on the Banks for cod, are frequently 
employed, though the buyers are much against the use 
of them ; for they say that the redness round the eyes 
of herrings is caused by the strangulating effect of the 
i 129 



UNITED STATES 

meshes ; and consequently they prefer those fish that have 
been caught in weirs or purse-seines. Weirs are very 
successful in late autumn, when the fish come close in- 
shore to spawn. 

The more distant herring-fishery, which extends as far 
as the British waters round New Brunswick, is carried 
on in smacks, and principally by means of purse-seines. 
The season is a long one, lasting at least three months. 
Often the catching is done in exactly the same way as 
mackerel-seining, the full net being towed aft; but, where 
small purses are used, the catch is sometimes hauled up 
on deck. Collecting-boats are often dispensed with, for 
many smacks carry a plentiful supply of ice ; and the 
herring, packed carefully in this, will keep good and 
fresh for months at a time ; other boats give up their 
catches daily to a steamer. 

Before the herring -fishery has ended for the year, 
another industry begins farther south : mulleting. The 
great mullet-ground is the Cedar Keys, off the Florida 
coast, and the season lasts from the beginning of 
December to the end of the first week in February. 
Gill-nets and even trawls are used for these ; but again 
neither is so popular as the purse-seine. The fish taken 
average two and a half pounds, and they are caught in 
astonishing profusion. A seine worked by eight men has 
been known to catch ten thousand of them at one shoot- 
ing. Reckoning at the rate of thirty fish to a cubit foot, 
this represents a solid mass measuring about seven feet 
each way, and weighing over eleven tons. 

130 



FISH AND FISHERMEN 

Coming a little further south and then sailing west- 
wards into the Gulf of Mexico, we light upon another 
important fishing-ground; the home of the "red snapper." 
This is a gorgeous creature, averaging 7 lb. in weight, 
which is regarded by the people of the Southern States 
as a great delicacy. It is found in depths of from ten 
to fifty fathoms, and swims over a bottom that is every- 
where dotted with rocks and lumps of coral, where no 
fisherman dare dream of shooting a net. 

Snapper-catching does not greatly differ from cod line- 
fishing. Each smack is manned by a crew of seven or 
eight men, who go fifty miles out and as much as two 
hundred and fifty along the shore. On reaching a favour- 
able spot the boat is either anchored or brought to heave- 
to, and work begins. As the snapper happens to be 
a particularly voracious fish (he has earned his name from 
his practice of snapping at everything that comes within 
his reach), very long lines are not necessary, for he spends 
a good half of his time chasing small fish that swim near 
the surface. Each man's line is furnished with two 
large, thick hooks and is weighted with four or five 
pounds of lead ; and, as a rule, before the weight has 
sunk more than a couple of fathoms, one, and sometimes 
two fish have swallowed the bait, not to say a hook as 
well. Bait, indeed, is a secondary matter ; hundreds of 
snappers are caught in a day with naked hooks ; a pebble 
lowered on a string would be sufficient tackle to draw 
them ; it might even be worth a sportsman's while to try 
them with an alder-fly or a cockchafer. 

A snapper boat carries no ice, no salt, and has no deal- 

131 



FISH AND FISHERMEN 

ings with steam collectors. Under hatches is an immense 
tank filled with water, and the fish, having been carefully 
made to disgorge the hook, are put into it ; the tank will 
hold a week's catch and, at the end of that time, the boat 
puts back to shore, and the fish are killed by a slight blow 
on the head when they are handed out to the buyers. 

Beside those already mentioned or yet to be discussed 
in other chapters, the Americans have many fish which 
are unknown in our own waters ; in most cases their names 
are descriptive, e.g. the horse-eyed jack, pork-fish, hog-fish, 
goat-fish, moon-fish, etc. Another individual that almost 
calls for separate mention is the menhaden, more com- 
monly known as the " porgy," once in great favour at the 
tables of the poorer classes in the States. This fishery is 
now spoken of as a lost art, though menhaden make 
excellent bait for cod, and have, in time past, been so 
plentiful as to be netted for field-manure. 



132 



CHAPTER XI 
THE BRITISH HERRING FISHERY 

The herring— The lugger— Night-work— Signs !— " Lythe "—Shooting 
the tackle— How the drift-net is worked— The trial shot— Shooting 
a "fleet "—The net filling — Hauling in — The first strike — A 
second shot— More than they can carry— " Maze," "cran," and 
"last" — Getting rid of the catch. 

AS a popular dish, where the poorer classes through- 
out the western world are concerned, the herring is 
hard to beat. If it were not such a prolific — and 
consequently cheap — fish, it would no doubt find favour 
even in the eyes of wealthy epicures ; for, in all its forms, 
fresh, salted, kippered, or red, it is more appetising and 
sustaining than many of the more expensive fish. 

Herring are in season whenever they can be procured, 
which is at almost all times of the year ; though during 
the first three months they are not at their best. Roughly 
speaking, from June to October is the season for the 
British fishery. 

All round our coast are herring boats of some sort or 
other ; but the important fleets hail from sundry Scotch 
and North Country ports ; from Yarmouth, of course ; 
from Ireland and the Isle of Man, and from North Devon. 
There is not a great deal of difference between the craft 
and methods in use in these various districts ; and perhaps 

i33 



THE BRITISH HERRING FISHERY 

the only distinction between a herring-fisher and any 
other is that the former grows rich more quickly and 
more surely than his less favoured brethren ; for where 
both supply and demand are abundant and fairly constant, 
there money must be made. 

The boat most generally employed is the Scotch or 
two-masted lugger, open or decked, as the case may be ; 
more often the latter. The luggers found on the coast of 
Scotland usually have a little cabin forward, but the rest 
of the vessel open. The North Country boats are long 
and narrow, with a pointed stern ; the foremast is placed 
as near as possible to the prow, which practice, though it 
may render her awkward and sulky when sailing against 
the wind, makes a very fast boat of her with the wind 
behind her. The vessels in the west and south-west are, 
as a rule, broader in the beam, and not uniformly so fast. 
The special advantage attaching to the use of the double 
lugger is that, while fishing is going on, the foremast can 
more easily be stepped (lowered) than could the main- 
mast of a cutter or yawl. And this measure is very 
necessary because, when once the nets are shot, even 
though there be no sail up, the least wind will add tre- 
mendously to the already heavy strain on the tow-rope ; 
and it is the skilled fisherman's one endeavour to keep 
such strain at a minimum. 

Herring-fishing is night-work, and the darker the night 
the better the men like it ; for the fish are much too 
wide awake to run their heads into the meshes as long 
as these are visible. To say that the boats go out every 
night in the season would be to imply either that the 

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Fishermen Laying-out Herrings for Sale at Lowestoft 



THE BRITISH HERRING FISHERY 

fisherman is an ass — and he is not — or that luck is always 
with the fleet. The herring fisherman, especially he of 
the North, is an exceedingly astute person, and will not 
risk his valuable tackle unless there is reasonable hope of 
gaining something thereby. True, there are times when 
he comes back with an almost empty boat, but such 
a calamity is more often than not due to some unforeseen 
accident, such as a trawler's having split up a shoal ; and 
it is made up for by the next lucky night. He has very 
reliable indications of a shoal being in the vicinity — the 
systematic flight of the sea-birds, a peculiar boiling up of 
the sea in isolated patches, the presence of porpoises or an 
occasional whale ; perhaps his wife or children have spent 
half the day watching for the appearance of such signs ; 
or he has done well at a certain spot on the previous 
night and means to try his luck again at the same place ; 
in any case he will not go unless there is something 
to go for. 

Sometimes a shoal moves from district to district with 
such rapidity that only the boat which happens to be on 
a certain spot at a given moment stands the least chance 
of making a capture ; other craft that have put off a 
little later will come up to find that the coveted shoal 
has swept onwards from — say — the Firth of Clyde, south- 
wards ; and to-morrow one or two fortunate Manx or 
Irish crews will have netted the fish that to-day have cir- 
cumvented the Scotchmen ; what remains of them being, 
perhaps, snapped up by the Devon men a night or 
two later. 

When the " signs " are sufficiently promising, the boats 

i3S 



THE BRITISH HERRING FISHERY 

put off as near sundown as tides will allow, making what 
sail they can ; often rowing as well, if current or wind 
be adverse, or if there be no tug handy. At this time of 
day the demeanour of the men is markedly the reverse of 
what it is when they go off at midnight or early morning ; 
as then their spirits and hilarity gradually rise, the 
farther they get from the shore, so now they begin 
cheerily and noisily, growing more silent and subdued as 
the darkness gathers. By the time it is dark not a voice 
will raise itself above a whisper; will scarcely utter a 
single sound other than an objurgation on the moon for 
shining, or on a juvenile member of the crew for snoring. 

A faint light streams down on the deck as the lamp is 
run up the mizzen-mast, and the hands ■ — six or seven — 
prepare to lower sail at a word from the helmsman. 
That personage has for some time been watching the 
flight and occasional downward swoop of a flock of sea- 
gulls ; where they are dropping, fish of some kind or 
other are sure to be near the surface. As the gloom 
deepens, another and more certain proof of the presence 
of a shoal appears, for sheets and streaks of phosphores- 
cent light begin to show themselves on the surface ; that 
means that the fish are stirring, and in very considerable 
numbers. Still our skipper does not seem to excite himself. 
Fish are there, sure enough; but they may not be the fish 
that he is seeking. Suppose the luminous flashes should be 
caused merely by a shoal of " lythe " ! It is not at all 
unlikely. 

Lythe are fish that swim in shoals off the Scotch coast 
and are practically useless as food. The oyster-dredger is 

136 



THE BRITISH HERRING FISHERY 

not alone in holding heterodox opinions on the subject of 
creation ; for the Scotch herring-fisher devoutly believes 
that the foul fiend created the lythe and invented the 
trawl-net — the one to give occasion for many disappoint- 
ments and much consequent swearing ; the other to drive 
away and break up the shoals of herrings which otherwise 
would swim obligingly towards the net spread for them. 

As the lugger draws near to the first of the phosphor- 
escent splashes, a whispered word goes round ; the skipper 
means to shoot a trial net, and we shall have an oppor- 
tunity of seeing how " drift " tackle is worked. (Some of 
the more up-to-date men use a trawl-net or purse-seine for 
herring.) The drift-nets are lying amidships, carefully 
coiled up ; each about fifty feet long and from nine to 
twelve deep, and as innocent of pockets, purses, or folds as 
a tennis-net ; the meshes, which go about thirty to the 
yard, will do all the work of themselves. The prudent 
skipper is determined not to act rashly ; the depth of 
water here is not much more than four fathoms, and there 
are gigantic jagged rocks about. 

" Try three, first," he mutters. 

A pull at the helm throws the boat round in order 
that the gear may be shot at the proper angle, i.e. across 
the current, so that the shoals will strike it in their course 
up or down ; and some of the hands stand by to pay out 
the first net. As it touches the water the tendency of 
the heavy twine meshes is to sink, even if the lower edge 
be not weighted with lead. 

" Let her go ; mind the corks, and easy with that foot- 
rope. 11 

137 



THE BRITISH HERRING FISHERY 

The first thing that has touched the water is a good- 
sized bladder, which the waves toss up and down like a 
feather ; this is tied to the end of a stout rope which 
forms the upper edge of the net. As the meshes dis- 
appear we can see that the net will not be allowed to 
sink to the bottom, for, along the line that ends in the 
bladder, is an array of lumps of cork, which, with the 
bladders, will keep the upper edge — or " back " — on the 
surface, while the net itself hangs perpendicularly. As 
the cork line comes to an end we see another bladder, and 
beyond it enough rope to connect up the beginning of 
the second net. This is quickly joined on and paid out, 
and then the third. The trial net has been shot. 

Meanwhile one of the crew has been engaged with 
what is termed the foot-rope or foot-line, a strong cord 
independent of the cork line, fastened to the " back " of 
each of the nets by a connecting cord, and so much 
longer than the cork-line that, when the nets are all shot, 
it sinks well below the under edge of them. It is on this 
rope that much of the strain of hauling-in will come ; 
moreover, should the cork-line be broken by a passing 
vessel, as not infrequently happens, everything would 
depend upon it ; therefore it must be kept safely out of 
the way of accidents. The ends of the lines are made 
fast to a tow-rope, which can be lengthened or shortened 
according as the boat wants to ride close to or away from 
her nets ; and the tackle is all ready for a strike, or 
catch. 

Now the foremast, taller considerably than the mizzen, 
has to be stepped ; sails and ropes are hauled down and 

138 



THE BRITISH HERRING FISHERY 

the mast is gently lowered backwards till it lies like a 
dividing-line along the middle of the vessel. At present 
nothing more can be done, and the men adjourn to the 
cabin-stove, or huddle round the fire-bucket if there be 
no cabin, and smoke their pipes or eat their supper in 
dead silence. Boat and nets are drifting, and, so long as 
they drift away from the rock-bed, the skipper does not 
worry himself; he can keep a certain amount of control 
over the vessel with the rudder, and, if he considers it 
necessary, he has kept up his mizzen-sail in order to hold 
her nose to the wind. 

Presently he gives a little chuckle of satisfaction ; the 
gleams and flashes in the water are broadening ; the 
surface is bubbling and frothing in places ; here and there 
the flashes break up from time to time into innumerable 
points of light ; and little clucking sounds are heard, 
like the popping of corks at a distance, or the fall of 
hailstones on a pond. Shall he risk putting out more 
nets ? By this time they must have drifted to a safe 
depth away from the sharp rocks that would make havoc 
of the gear. Why should he have only three when the 
boat will stand a dozen or more ? 

" Hullo ! Blue light to leVard ! May happen the 
Argyle 's made a strike," says one of the men ; and every- 
one looks in the direction indicated, where, among the 
sparse train or group of yellow mast-head lights, one blue 
flame stands conspicuous. 

The skipper still watches the little islands of foam, 
making up his mind that he too will soon be in a position 
to run up a blue light, and gives the word to haul in the 

i39 



THE BRITISH HERRING FISHERY 

nearest net for examination. The warp comes in so 
easily that a stranger to the work would conclude that 
nothing has been done ; surely only an empty net could 
weigh so little ! 

True enough, as the first meshes rise above the water, 
nothing can be seen in the net. But wait ; near the 
lower edge is an irregular row of herring, whose presence 
suggests that there are more where they came from. The 
bulk of the shoal has not yet started to rise. 

" That's near enough," says the skipper. " Let's run 
out the whole fleet 1 '; and speedily extra nets are fastened 
on, one after another, till there is a wall of them, many 
hundreds of yards long, trailing out into the sea, the 
cork-line waggling and coiling till it looks like an endless 
worm. 

Other boats are running up blue-lights now, but no one 
troubles to comment on the fact ; there is silence again, 
only broken by the php-plop of the fish as they rise, or 
by a sudden wild shriek from the gulls as they announce 
to their friends the fishermen that the herrings continue 
to play near the surface. Following the track of the 
cork-line with our eye, we can see that it is now illuminated 
all along with streaks of greenish light ; every now and 
then, too, we may see the bladders rocking and bobbing in 
a curious manner ; now one goes completely under and 
comes up again ; the corks are swaying hither and 
thither irresponsibly. The advance-guard of a shoal is 
being safely snared. 

But, before there is time to do more than arrive at this 
conclusion, a whole wave of phosphorus flashes along in 

140 



THE BRITISH HERRING FISHERY 

the direction of the net-fleet, and bladders and cork-line 
are dragged under ; the tow- warp groans, and strains on 
the boat. The main body is encountering the nets, and 
the crew no longer care whether the Argyle has made a 
strike or no ; at any rate their boat has. They shuffle to 
their feet without a word from the skipper, for ex- 
perience of him and his methods has taught them that, 
if he is not one to be in an unnecessary hurry, he equally 
is not given to letting his nets get fouled or sunk, through 
a foolish desire to catch more fish than he can possibly 
carry away. 

Seizing the sodden warp, they drag and strain till 
sufficient of it is hauled in to go round the windlass ; and 
not till then does one of them untie the end of it from the 
cross-bit. Irish or South Country fishermen would bid 
him hurry himself, in no measured terms, for the strain is 
unspeakable, even on these tough muscles and strong-knit 
frames ; but the more phlegmatic Northerners just bide 
their time and wait patiently while the end of the warp is 
hitched to the windlass or the capstan, and till the click- 
click of the ratch stops, telling them that the man who is 
turning has taken in as much rope as, unaided, he is able. 
Then one or two of them join him at the windlass, while 
the rest stretch themselves and prepare for the further 
task of drawing the nets over the gunwale. A few more 
turns of the winch and the first bladder is lifted in and 
the top corner of the nearest net comes into view. Again 
the streaks of greenish light, more tangible now ; again 
the popping, buzzing sound; then you realise that 
hundreds, or thousands, of the herring, caught fast by 

141 



THE BRITISH HERRING FISHERY 

the gills, are wriggling for freedom, so close to you that 
you can touch the polished little bodies ; more, you can 
see cod and other big fish jumping above water to snatch 
a mouthful. 

" Yeo-ho ; oo-up ! Now, all together — oo-up ! Now — 
oo-up ! All together ! " murmur the hands in a sort of 
doleful chorus, as they bend to their labour, and with 
muscles strained to their utmost, hoist in coil after coil of 
net, so stuffed with fish that, in places, it is difficult to 
find a hand-hold. Here and there may be an empty mesh, 
where a slender youngster has been able to squeeze itself 
right through the little inch-and-a-half opening ; but 
the majority of the middle and lower squares have 
tenants. 

" We'll have to be lively, lads," says the skipper, who 
has left the helm and is bearing a hand with the nets ; 
" Tm thinking there'll be dead stuff in the last three, 
else." 

When herring have been held by their gills for some 
length of time they are apt to die — in fact, no fish dies so 
quickly, whence the saying, " dead as a herring" ; and 
dead fish means dead weight ; a net filled with such a 
catch will sometimes tear itself away from the " fleet " 
and be lost beyond the hope of recovery. Therefore the 
men waste no time in working their way through the 
seemingly interminable series of nets, for the last three to 
come up were the first three to be shot, and they will be 
lucky if they find them unbroken. The last lot are more 
crowded than ever ; every now and then there is a little 
jerk as half a dozen meshes break ; and some of the men 

142 



THE BRITISH HERRING FISHERY 

lean over the bulwarks and, getting their arms under the 
net, lift in whole bundles of living and dead fish. 

"Last lot," says someone who has been mechanically 
counting the nets as they come up. Now the jerks and 
rips are growing more frequent, for here are more dead 
herring than live ones. That last net will require a lot 
of patient mending when they get it ashore. But, in 
spite of breakages and unusual weight, it is pulled 
aboard at last. While the men nearest the gunwale have 
been hauling in, others behind them have been busily 
shaking and twisting the nets in order to clear them as 
far as they can of their silvery load ; and now that all 
hands can be spared for this work the hold is getting 
fuller and fuller, till, to the inexperienced eye, it would 
seem that the vessel must either founder or else take 
about a day and a half to wander home, lame duck 
fashion. But the crew cast almost a disparaging glance 
over the catch ; all of them have seen twice as many to 
one strike. 

"Unship the last three,"" cries the skipper, "and let's 
try another shoot." 

The three nets at the top of the coil are untied and 
laid aside, considerably the worse for wear; and, as the 
water still glitters, and it will be long before daylight 
appears, the remainder of the fleet is re-shot. Then care- 
ful hands spread out the pyramids of fish so that those at 
the top fill up the spare corners of the hold and leave 
room for the next batch. 

Now that the nets are shot for the second time, a by- 
stander has an opportunity of noticing that a peculiar 

143 



THE BRITISH HERRING FISHERY 

cheep-cheep sound, like the squeak of mice, is coming up 
from the hold. If the skipper be facetiously inclined he 
will reply on being questioned as to the noise — 

"Ou, it'll just be the haerhr greetin' to gae back." 

Such an informant must needs, one 'would think, be own 
brother to the crab or lobster-boiler who announces that 
his fish scream when thrown into the hot water. As a 
matter of fact the noise is caused by the escape of the air 
from the herrings' swimming-bladders. 

•■All right; pull up — and shairp!" cries our skipper 
suddenly ; and the same weary work has to be gone 
through all over again. And this time the meshes seem 
fuller than before ; the net must have shot clean in front 
of a shoal that was driving down with the current. The 
skipper measures the contents of the hold with his eye. 
There are still two more nets to be emptied, and the boat 
won"t stand another barrel-full. He takes a philosophical 
view of the subject ; the rest must go back. A grasping 
vouncr skipper would perhaps load his vessel till she was 
like a coal-tramp, but this fellow has more sense ; he has 
done what, he came to do and he means to get home. The 
superfluous fish are shaken out of the net overboard, and 
the tired fishermen withdraw to the fire, except those who 
are occupied in unstepping the mast and fixing the lug. 

Dawn is coming on ; many of the mast-head lights 
have disappeared and the fishing fleet show signs of 
gathering together. 

" Twelve maze," or " Fourteen cran," cries the skipper 
of the Argyle exultingly. "That'll beat ye, lad." 

" I'm thinking we've gotten as many," says our skipper 

i44 



THE BRITISH HERRING FISHERY 

diffidently, knowing full well that his catch amounts to 
nearly half as much again. 

" Maze," " cran," etc., it should be explained, are semi- 
local terms. The measure for herrings differs according 
to the neighbourhood. The three generally recognised 
are the maze on the west coast of Scotland and the Irish 
Sea generally (mease in Devonshire) ; the last on the east 
coast of England, and the cran on the east of Scotland. 
The last-named — equivalent to 26 § gallons — makes the 
fish sold by bulk ; the other two by numbers. The east- 
coast fishermen reckon the warp (i.e. 4 fish) as their unit ; 
and 33 warps, or 132 fish, make a " long hundred" ; 1320 
fish go to the thousand, and ten thousand (13,200) = a 
last. 

The west -coasters reckon 123 to the long hundred, 
and 5 long hundred (615) to the maze. Mr. Frederick 
Pollock, however, makes the Devonshiremen arrive at 
their maze in a totally different way. Their unit is a 
cast, i.e. 3, or as many as can be held in the hand ; 51 
cast = a quarter maze (153) — the number, he points out, 
of the miraculous draught mentioned in St. John xxi. 11 ; 
and 4 quarter maze = 612. 

Now that the sails are set the men are free to break- 
fast ; for, unless they have come a long way from home — 
in which case the fish has still to be sprinkled with salt 
— there is nothing more for them to do till the question 
of selling arises. The getting rid of the fish will also 
differ in various districts. In many parts the boats will 
have a good-sized harbour to run into, and the fishwives 
will be waiting on the quay to buy up the catch as fast 
k 145 



THE BRITISH HERRING FISHERY 

as it can be thrown out to them. At a big port like 
Grimsby it will be hurried off to the market and sold 
by auction, or at current market-price. In many places 
the steam -carrier is requisitioned. She comes out to 
meet the fleet at dawn, and the agents on board buy each 
boat-load (or undertake to dispose of it at the market) as 
it comes alongside. 

As far as the picturesque is concerned, one cannot help 
regretting that the account of the herring-fishery as out- 
lined above must soon be decidedly "out of date.' 1 
Following American and Norwegian examples our herring- 
fleets have gradually congregated in the big ports, have 
substituted the purse-seine or the trawl for the old gill- 
net, and are even abandoning the luggers of our child- 
hood in favour of ponderous steamers. 

By means of the purses mentioned in the last chapter 
an entire shoal will be taken (amounting sometimes to 
hundreds of thousands), necessitating the employment 
of extra deck-hands and the erection of huge store and 
clearing-houses. 

In addition to those herring caught here, millions are 
brought to Hull and Lowestoft from Norway. The Nor- 
wegian fishermen, on sighting a shoal, lower into the 
water an imitation whale, made of wood and weighted ; 
and, terrified at sight of this, the herring swim into a 
bay which forms a natural trap. Huge purse-seines are 
then shot and the whole shoal is rapidly netted. The 
catch is sold by the box or in one lot ; in the latter case 
the buyer bargains while the fish are still in the water, 
and estimates the value with the aid of a water spy-glass. 

146 



CHAPTER XII 
FISHING IN THE MEDITERRANEAN 

Possibilities of the Mediterranean fisheries— Migration of the anchovy 
— Shooting the seine for anchovies— The moored net— Some of its 
occupants — The fisherman's friends and enemies — Sharks— Saw- 
fish and sword-fish — The tunny — Setting the nets — Slaughtering 
the catch— Another Sicilian industry— Line-fishing. 

A SEA that is over two thousand miles long and con- 
siderably more than a million square miles in 
extent, that never experiences a temperature of 
less than 50° F., and scarcely knows the meaning of tides ; 
above all, that abounds in fish of every description, as 
well as turtles, sponge, coral, and amber, sounds like a 
fisherman's Elysium ; and such, in the hands of more 
energetic people than the North Africans and the 
Southern Europeans, it might be. Unfortunately the 
Mediterranean washes the coasts of nations that, for the 
more part, have ceased to believe much in hard work ; 
and even our own poor Irish fisheries are better managed 
and relatively more productive than theirs. Exceptions 
must be made in the case of France, and of Austria, 
which has her Adriatic fishing navy of twelve thousand 
men ; also in that of the East Mediterranean sponge- 
fishers, of whom more anon. 

H7 



FISHING IN THE MEDITERRANEAN 

The reader may ask, What about the Andalusian and 
Italian fisheries ? What about the sardine industry ? 

Spain and Italy import far more fish than they ever 
catch, and Cornwall and Brittany send pilchards by the 
million to the southern sardine factories every year. 
Italy, it is true, has in late years taken more interest 
in her fisheries, even to the extent of going in for arti- 
ficial fish-breeding; but comparatively few of the men 
attempt deep-water work. 

Starting eastwards from Gibraltar, the first important 
fishery we meet with is that carried on by the Andalusians, 
French, and Genoese for the anchovy. This little fish is 
about three inches long, bluish-brown on the back, and 
silvery white on the belly. Strictly it is a tropical fish, 
but the variety known as the common anchovy may be 
found anywhere south of Ireland. By the end of April, 
shoals of them collect off the south-west of Spain, and 
sweep through the Strait of Gibraltar in millions. By 
far the greater number of them, as soon as they are in the 
Mediterranean, seem to take an almost straight course 
north-east, shaving the under side of the Balearic Islands 
and making steadily for the north of Corsica, and up to 
Leghorn. Arrived here they circle round the little island 
of Gorgona, remaining till the end of July, when the 
survivors return to the Atlantic, swimming along the 
Portuguese and French coasts, and even as far north as 
England and Holland. 

The Spaniards and the Majorcans thus get first shot at 
the visitors ; they use the seine principally, working it 
from small boats close in to shore. Some, however, put 

148 



FISHING IN THE MEDITERRANEAN 

out to sea in smacks something like the old Algerine 
xebecs, rigged with two and three lateen or triangular 
sails, and furnished with a bag-net that resembles a 
shrimp-net without the beam. Many of the Genoese 
anchovy fishers use the same kind of tackle, shooting it 
from a boat whose build would astonish English fishermen ; 
for it is a short, broad, clumsy little thing with a double 
curve along the bottom, leaving her with no keel, or 
rather with a keel that is buried between the two curves ; 
nevertheless, experienced persons say that no better boat 
for the class of work could be found. 

The seine-catches are necessarily enormous. The shoals, 
which can be seen from a great distance, announce their 
presence by the pale tint which appears in patches on the 
water ; and at sight of these patches the boats put out. 
Sometimes the Andalusians have no need to do more than 
lie in wait on the shore, for the shoals come in so near 
that it seems as if you could wade out and catch the fish 
in buckets. Going leisurely to work, the rowing-boats 
pull out to the far side of the nearest shoal, each two 
carrying between them a seine a couple of hundred yards 
long, six to eight fathoms deep in the middle, rounding 
off to three or four at each end or wing. 

When a pair of boats has arrived at the desired spot 
the seine is shot as soon as they have separated to a 
distance equal to the length of the net, each end of which 
is made fast to a long tow-line, the other ends of these 
being tied one to each boat. Then the rowers pull back 
very gently, the boats gradually getting nearer one an- 
other again, and carry the tow-lines ashore, where women 

149 



FISHING IN THE MEDITERRANEAN 

and children, or horses, are waiting to haul up. It will 
be seen that the net, being pulled in by two forces that 
gradually approach each other, thus converts itself into 
a kind of bag in which the fish are swept along willy-nilly. 

As soon as the seine is within a few yards of dry land 
it is moored, a smaller net is shot inside it, and baling out 
commences — a task that sometimes lasts a whole day and 
more ; the fish are then packed in kegs between layers of 
salt and taken to the factories. 

The anchovy industry is a very ancient one ; the garum 
of the Roman banquets was merely another form of 
anchovy sauce, and the condiment which Hindu cooks 
call red-fish is obtained from the anchovies caught at the 
mouth of the Ganges. 

In the Adriatic and in the shallower parts of the Gulf 
of Lyons, we find the moored net a good deal in use for 
mullet and dory. With and without a beam, it is shot 
across tide from small boats, which are held by the same 
anchors that moor the net. The net is sunk half doubled 
or " mouthed," that is to say the ropes attached to the 
upper corners by which it will ultimately be pulled up, 
are first carried through rings at the lower corners so that, 
when once it is anchored, it lies bowed ; and, on the ropes 
being tightened by the upward pull, will become com- 
pletely closed. Such nets are cleared the first thing in 
the morning and the last thing at night, the fish being 
taken ashore by tugs or large two-masters. 

A frequent tenant of these nets is the dragonet, which 
is beautifully marked with blue and yellow on a white 
ground, and is of the same family as the Scotch " gowdie." 

150 



FISHING IN THE MEDITERRANEAN 

Its peculiarity is that, instead of the ordinary gill-opening, 
it has two holes in its neck ; its eyes are situated on the 
top of the head, so that the fish always looks upwards ; 
its skin has no scales. With it will probably be found the 
jaune doree, or yellow gilt fish, which has been vulgarly 
anglicised as " John Dory. 11 It may be remembered that 
this fish, like the haddock, has an oval black spot on 
either side ; from which the pious southern fisher-folk 
argue that it was from the dory's mouth that St. Peter 
took the tribute money, the marks being the impress of 
his finger-tips ; unfortunately for the truth of the legend, 
there is neither dory nor haddock in the Sea of Galilee or 
in any other fresh water. Another fish of the same family, 
which only the poorer Italians will eat, is the boar-fish, 
whose head is shaped like the snout of a hog. 

The fisherman of the south of France has a valued 
friend in the maigre, a doubtful one in the pilot fish, and a 
deadly enemy in the shark. The least known and most 
interesting of these, the maigre, can be taken with long 
lines, but quite as often goes of its own accord into a net 
and stays there. Its average length is four feet, though 
fishermen boast of having taken many six and seven feet 
long. When it finds itself among a number of other fish, 
it emits a humming or buzzing noise that is plainlj 
audible through fifteen fathoms of water, and in this way 
it is an infallible guide to the men as to where they should 
shoot the nets. It figured in Roman feasts as the wnbrbia, 
and is still a great delicacy in France and Italy, especially 
its head. Its internal hearing apparatus was worn, set in 
gold, in the Middle Ages, as a charm against colic. 

151 



FISHING IN THE MEDITERRANEAN 

The pilot-fish, as our sailors call it, resembles the 
mackerel in size, marking, and flavour, and can be trawled 
with more ease than anything except a herring, for, in 
small batches, it will follow a ship for a thousand miles. 
But fishermen have a superstition that there is a secret 
understanding between itself and the shark, for where one 
is the other is usually not far off. 

Almost all varieties of sharks, except the Greenlander, 
are represented in these waters : the fox-shark, the 
hammer-head, the white, the blue, etc. The last is the 
fisherman's pet abomination, for it not only eats the fish 
that he is wanting to catch, varying its diet with a human 
meal when circumstances permit, but it will bite a mouth- 
ful out of a full net (generally about half the catch), and 
swallow fish and meshes with gusto. The shark is shot 
and harpooned for the sake of his oil and the well-being 
of the community, and the Levant traders make a con- 
siderable sum annually over the sale of shagreen, which is 
supposed to be shark-skin dressed, but is more often the 
hide of camels, donkeys, and horses. 

Two other net-destroyers are the pristes, or saw-fish, 
whose toothed snout is familiar to most of us ; and the 
celebrated sword-fish. This giant — his body is fourteen 
feet long and his proboscis another seven — is an un- 
reasonable beast. He does not care about fish as food, in 
fact, he lives on seaweed, yet is never so happy as when 
breaking up a shoal and frightening fish away from his 
neighbourhood ; and, when he happens to take up a 
position in front of the net, this propensity of his has 
rather a disastrous effect, for other fish dare not come 

152 



FISHING IN THE MEDITERRANEAN 

near. He is a wonderfully fast swimmer, as may be seen 
when he is fleeing from a shark, and is perhaps the most 
powerful of all fish. He will swim straight through a 
full net, tearing up the anchors or snapping the tow-lines ; 
sometimes he is shot, and his flesh is supposed to be par- 
ticularly nutritious, especially if he is young. 

Passing downwards to Sicily and Sardinia we find the 
inhabitants possessing a monopoly in tunny-fishing. That 
monopoly, by the way, is only of recent date, for these 
curiosities used to be caught in great numbers by the 
Andalusian fishermen and also by the Turks. 

The tunny (Greek thicno, to dart along) is a giant 
mackerel, dark blue above, white below, and silver on the 
sides, measuring anything from ten to twenty feet long, 
and sometimes weighing as much as half a ton. It is not 
quite peculiar to the Mediterranean, for there is a species 
found off the east coast of the United States which the 
Americans call the albicore and the horse-mackerel. 

In Sicily and Sardinia it is caught very much as the 
Sicilian Greeks captured it, seven hundred years B.C., only 
with perhaps less assiduity, by means of nets and 
harpoons. Like other creatures that shoal, they can- 
not do without betraying their whereabouts, and a man 
perched on an eminence can detect from a great distance 
the pale brown blotches which a crowd of them would 
create on the water-surface. In spring and summer the 
fish come within a mile of the shore for spawning, and it 
is then that the tunny-harvest is made. 

A coarse-meshed net, more than a mile long, is carried 
out to sea, and one end of it moored, the other being 

iS3 



FISHING IN THE MEDITERRANEAN 

made fast ashore or to a smack ; a second, almost as long, 
is then shot parallel to the coast, making with the first 
net either a T or a cross, and these are left in that 
position for at least twenty-four hours. When a sufficient 
number of fish have been covered, the towing-in begins ; 
the anchors are pulled up, and a line fastened to each wing 
is rapidly carried ashore by boats. The towlines being 
pulled very swiftly — often by horse-power — not only the 
fish that are already caught by the gills are brought in, 
but also those that happen to be within reach of the two 
wings. 

The moment the Bet is drawn into a specially prepared 
shallow, the fish find themselves enclosed above and below, 
and there is no possible escape for them. Then the kill- 
ing ; this is unsportsmanlike, but all fishing is apt to be 
so when money is the sole end in view. The poor fish, 
mewed up so closely that you can't tell one from another, 
are speared at leisure from the boats with harpoons till 
all are dead. They are then disembowelled and quartered 
and taken ashore for boiling, for the sake of their oil, 
which is valuable and plentiful, one fish alone sometimes 
yielding twenty gallons. Tunny-fishing gives employment 
to more than three thousand men in the two islands, 
much of the work in Sicily being done by convicts. 

Another Sicilian industry, now on the wane although 
popular among the ancients, is pinna-gathering, the 
" pinna " being a member of the pearl-mussel family. 
The shell is immense, about the size of a very large meat- 
dish, and is gathered by wading and rock-scrambling. 
The fish itself is a secondary matter, though it is largely 

1 54 



FISHING IN THE MEDITERRANEAN 

eaten by the poorer classes ; but the filament or byssus, 
by which it attaches itself to the rocks or other objects, 
is about two feet long, and is used for making fabrics, 
being very tough and glossy. 

The Greek and East Mediterranean fisheries are so 
sadly neglected that there is really nothing to say about 
them, all such work being overshadowed by the importance 
attached to sponge-diving ; while the fisheries of Austria 
do not differ from those of Italy except in magnitude. 
On the African coast of the Sea, fresh- water fish are more 
sought after than those from salt water, for the reason 
that they are more easily come by. The fishermen of 
Tripoli are industrious, and France has infused a certain 
amount of energy into those of Tunisia ; but, while a 
hand-net lowered haphazard into a pool or river will 
bring up a day's supply of fish for a whole family — nay, 
while live fish are even thrown at a man's door, as some- 
times happens in North Africa when an artesian well is 
sunk, coast work is liable to be neglected. 

A word about Mediterranean line-fishing among the 
French, Genoese and Venetians. Hand-lines are used 
principally for maigres, eels, and rays, the work being done 
from quays and small boats. Among the rays thus caught 
is one which commands more sale to conjurers, naturalists, 
and practical jokers than to ordinary consumers — the 
torpedo, or electric ray, which is so like the skate that it 
is often mistaken for it, and which has under its gills, two 
organs wherein is lodged an electrical apparatus capable 
of giving twenty or thirty violent shocks per minute. 



155 



CHAPTER XIII 
THE PILCHARD— THE STURGEON 

The Cornish fisherman— The pilchard— Shoaling— Drift - nets and 
seines— The " seine-boat "—Shooting the net— The stop-seines— 
Sharks !— " Tucking "—Taking the fish ashore— The factory— The 
sturgeon— Russian sturgeon and sterlet fishing— Isinglass and 
caviare. 

CORNWALL and the pilchard are as closely asso- 
ciated in one's mind as Devonshire and cream, and 
any one who has seen the coast-line between the 
Lizard and St. Ives will also unconsciously connect pil- 
chard-fishing with danger. Certain spots do not get such 
names as the Devil's Frying-pan or the Lion Rocks for 
nothing. 

The Cornish fisherman takes himself far more seriously 
than the happy-go-lucky fellows of the south and east 
coasts. Instead of their quaint survivals of Saxon 
paganism, he holds certain gloomy predestinarian views, 
and devoutly believes in the ultimate perdition of the 
Devonshire trawlers. But he is a fine man all the same, 
and if his opinions give him the courage to face a rock- 
studded sea that, even in the brightest of weather, would 
be uninviting to most landsmen, he had better stick to 
them. 

From October to July he is occupied as fishing jack-of- 

156 



THE PILCHARD— THE STURGEON 

all-trades — spratting, crabbing, mackerelling, trawling. 
But, when July comes, every other interest is put on 
one side by the men of St. Ives and Penzance for the sake 
of the pilchard-harvest, which will last till the equinoctial 
storms of late September have begun to drive the fish to 
the ground, or further out to sea. 

The pilchard, or the "gypsy herring" as the Scotch 
fishermen call it, is merely a large sardine or a small 
herring, and may be of any length up to nine inches. 
Really it can be found off the Cornish coast at all seasons 
of the year, though in December and January one would 
have to go down to the mud after it ; in March it begins 
to shoal, but to no great extent, and the fishery seldom 
starts before the end of June or beginning of July. For 
some good reason the pilchard has, through successive cen- 
turies, decided that that particular quarter of the Atlantic 
is best adapted to spawning purposes and to the special 
class of food which it most affects ; and thus, year after 
year, it chooses almost the same spots for shoaling. It is 
a most voracious little creature, its food consisting mainly 
of a kind of shrimp scarcely larger than a pin's head, or 
of the roes of dead fish when it can get them. 

A shoal of pilchards must be seen in order to be fully 
realised. It has been likened to an immense army, with 
wings outstretched in line with the land, and composed of 
contingents which are continually taking up a new posi- 
tion. Wherever the shoals move, they give the appear- 
ance of a cloud-shadow to the water-surface, and by this 
the pilchard-watchmen profit ; for men are placed on 
rising ground to look for these signs, and the moment 

157 



THE PILCHARD— THE STURGEON 

they see them they signal by means of a white canvas ball 
to the boats that are lying in wait below. 

Ever since the reign of Queen Elizabeth this fishery has 
been closely protected and governed by Acts of Parlia- 
ment ; the law even decides as to the dimensions of the 
nets, every one of which has to be registered. St. Ives 
has over three hundred nets, and is the centre of six 
specially appointed fishing-stations. 

The net most in use is the seine — and that of gigantic 
proportions ; the smallest allowed for out-fishing being a 
hundred and sixty fathoms long, eight fathoms deep at 
the middle, and six at the ends. These belong principally 
to companies nowadays, but a few private individuals still 
embark in the trade. Fleets of drift-nets, seven fathoms 
deep and three-quarters of a mile long, are also used, and 
are worked like herring-nets. 

The old-fashioned "seine-boat' 1 is a ponderous craft 
thirty-two feet long, manned by a crew of eight — six to 
row and two to manage the gear. Before sunset she is 
lying off the shore, awaiting the signal from the men on 
the look-out, and, the moment that comes, she pulls away 
as directed by them. With her are two shorter boats, 
each with six men aboard, and behind her she tows a 
third — a little cock-boat or " lurker," from which the 
skipper gives his orders and superintends the manipula- 
tion of the net ; thus a pilchard-seine takes four boats to 
manage it. 

At such work as this there is little time for spells 
of idleness ; hard, heavy rowing, often against wind and 
current, is the oarsmen's portion ; unceasing vigilance that 

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THE riLCHARD— THE STURGEON 

of the skipper and the net-minders. At times the skipper 
seems to be giving as many and as rapid directions as 
though he were a coach training a racing crew. This is 
because there is no reliance to be placed on the position 
of the bodies of the shoal ; at one time the fish will 
appear to be making straight away from the boat's 
course ; the minute after, the rowers must suddenly slow 
up, because it seems as though the entire shoal is driving 
as quickly as possible towards them. 

At last, at a shout from the skipper, every one stops 
pulling and rests on his oar, and the two net-men in the 
seine-boat, one at bow and the other in the stern, throw 
the ends of the seine to the two smaller boats, and all 
three begin shooting. The " bunt " or deepest portion of 
the net is sunk from the large boat and requires careful 
handling, being the most heavily weighted part. As soon 
as the lower edge of this has touched the water it is 
maintained in that position while the other two crews 
arrange the tow-lines that are to be attached to the 
wings. 

" Right,' 1 and " Ay, ay ! " come hoarsely from first one 
boat and then the other, and the men in the principal 
boat lower the bunt gently, parallel to the coast-line, till 
only the cork-rope is visible. 

Now that the main net is down the seine-boat pulls 
rapidly back towards the shore for a minute and then 
stops again, waiting to complete the work. Meanwhile 
the boat at each end has been joining one wing of a 
second and a third net — the " stop-seines " — to the prin- 
cipal seine, and is now pulling towards the bigger craft in 

iS9 



THE PILCHARD— THE STURGEON 

order to throw the connecting line at the other end on 
board of her, paying out part of her stop-seine as she 
goes. The lines are seized by the waiting crew, drawn 
together, and the two stops joined so that they are like 
one net ; and then the meeting-point is lowered like the 
rest. The result of this manoeuvre is that a second seine 
has been shot — making, with the first, an oval or a letter 
D, according to the length of the stops — in front of the 
shoal, thereby arresting the fish that had been swimming 
towards the shore away from the large seine and driving 
them back to it. 

Now the three boats, all pulling together, begin slowly 
towing in till shallower water is reached. Then another 
halt is made, for the area covered by the nets is larger 
than is necessary, now that there is no longer danger of 
the fish swimming under the net. The small boats again 
make for the "joins 11 ; each one separates its own end of 
the stop-net from the wing of the seine, and between 
them they rapidly draw these wings together till the 
whole forms a rough circle ; then the stop-net is removed 
and towing begins once more, and continues till some 
time after the lead-line has begun to scrape along the 
bottom, when the net is moored. 

By dawn the men will be off again, for sunset and sun- 
rise are the two favourable times for catching. The nets 
are paid out as before, the morning work being perhaps a 
little more leisurely done, because light is coming instead 
of going. Occasionally while at this morning fishing, the 
cork-line is suddenly seen to sway and bob, and perhaps to 
be drawn under altogether, as though a shoal had been 

160 



THE PILCHARD— THE STURGEON 

caught by the gills and were carrying it down with their 
weight. 

"A shark, lads, 1 ' roars the skipper. "Look to your 
tow-ropes." 

Again the cork-line ducks, then comes up again, and 
floating with it is, alas ! a jagged strip of netting several 
yards long. A blue shark that has wandered up from 
the Bay of Biscay has helped himself to a mouthful of 
the fish. 

" Pull up sharp, 11 is the order, which is quickly executed 
and the net examined. Perhaps the mischievous monster 
has but bitten a hole big enough for its unwieldy body to 
pass through ; if so a fold is made, the edges are deftly 
joined up without useless lamentation, and the net is 
taken aboard till another shoal presents itself. But where 
drift-nets are used, and the pilchards therefore a fixture 
in the net, times have been known when, on starting to 
haul up, the hapless fishermen have found little to haul 
beyond the cork-line and a strip of net, for the shark has 
passed along the entire length of the " fleet, 11 cutting out 
the catch as though with a pair of scissors, with the result 
that the lower part of the net — or as much of it as has 
not been swallowed — has been sunk irretrievably, together 
with the fish that it contained. 

During the past five-and-twenty years many of the 
old seine rowing-boats have been displaced by steamers, 
but it may be questioned how far this is a change for 
the better. Certainly larger seines can be used, and 
towing is made easier, but here the fishermen will tell 
you that the advantages end; for a great part of the 
l 161 



THE PILCHARD— THE STURGEON 

work must still be done by small boats, so that there is 
no appreciable decrease in the danger involved, and when 
the men add up their profits they find themselves no 
better off than before. 

We left the full seine moored close in to shore, await- 
ing the operation known as "tucking. 1 ' When so many 
thousands of fish are packed together in this manner they 
cannot be taken from the net all in a few minutes, or 
even hours. A good-sized catch of pilchards will often 
take several days to move, whence the notion of keeping 
them in the water alive. Where the fish have been taken 
in drift-nets they are removed on board the smacks 
from which the nets have been shot, and sprinkled with 
salt. 

" Tucking " is clearing the seine with the aid of a tuck- 
net, which is just half the length of the principal seine. 
It is shot from a small boat, inside the large net, and 
when it is down we notice that in addition to the two 
end lines which are being drawn together, a third and 
stouter one is sticking out of the water. This line is 
fastened to the lower edge of the smaller bunt, and is 
now hauled on till the middle of the tuck comes up 
concave, drawing a large proportion of the fish up to 
the surface ; and it only remains to bale them out. This 
is done by scooping them into large baskets, which are 
placed in the boats that are waiting round the moored 
seine, and sent ashore. 

The crowd of watchers for the boats is composed of 
two classes : " blowsers," or licensed porters who carry the 
balk of the catch to the curing-yard ; and the wives and 

162 



THE PILCHARD— THE STURGEON 

children of the fishermen, who will take home as many 
fish as they can, for there is scarcely one of these in- 
dustrious Cornishmen who does not do a certain amount 
of curing on his own account in his spare time. 

Let us now take a glance at one of these curing-yards, 
where almost all the work is in the hands of women. 
In the first place the pilchards have to be sorted, the 
larger ones to be exported to the West Indies or sold 
for local consumption, the smaller to be sent to the 
Mediterranean to be made into sardines. Then a large 
square space on the stone floor is covered with a stratum 
of the fish, and over it is sprinkled a generous supply 
of coarse salt ; then other layers of fish and salt alter- 
nately, till a pile five or six feet high is made. The 
heaps are left in this condition for a month, the oil, 
water, and salt gradually draining out of them into 
gutters communicating with tanks. 

By this time the fish are " cured " ; they have now to 
be carefully washed, after which only the packing remains 
to be done ; the latter is the most important and lengthy 
part of the business, for improperly packed fish and bad 
fish mean the same thing. The pilchards must be placed 
in layers in barrels, and, when each barrel will hold no 
more, a weight is placed on the top of it and the bulk 
is steadily reduced by gradual pressure till the tub is 
only two-thirds full, the oil thus squeezed from the fish 
oozing out of the seams. When the barrel has been 
filled up once more, the pressure is repeated ; and so on, 
till it will hold no more, and the fish are ready for 
export. The liquor drained and squeezed from the 

163 



THE PILCHARD— THE STURGEON 

pilchards was at one time allowed to run away and breed 
fever, but it is now collected with great care and sold as 
manure. 



THE STURGEON 

I do not include the sturgeon in this chapter because 
zoologically it is a close relative of the pilchard, but 
because it too has to pass through a factory and export 
phase. So far from being connected with the pilchard, 
it has little but gills, fins, and tail in common with 
it, for it is a cartilaginous fish, like the shark, having 
gristle in place of true bone; it is devoid of teeth 
and has a long tapering snout, whence its name is 
derived (Latin, stiria, an icicle). Like the salmon, it 
divides its time between the sea and the river, though 
there is an entirely fresh-water variety which is found 
in the shallows of Lakes Michigan and Erie. Generally 
speaking, it passes the greater part of the year in the 
sea, entering the rivers in spring for spawning, and 
occasionally in the autumn for some purpose at present 
unknown. Its length is from six to eleven feet, and it 
is believed to live for two and three hundred years. 

South Russia and parts of North America are the 
special localities for this fishery, though the sturgeon 
appears in all the temperate quarters of the world. Most 
readers are probably aware that in England it is a 
" royal fish," and when found in the Thames within the 
Lord Mayor's jurisdiction can be claimed by the Sov- 
ereign. 

164 



THE PILCHARD— THE STURGEON 

In the Caspian, Azov and Black Seas it is sometimes 
taken by long lines, but the Russian fishermen mostly 
rely on the spring up-river migration ; at one Volga 
station alone more than ten thousand fish are often 
caught during that fortnight. The modern method is 
by double-walled nets moored across the current at the 
river-mouths, or by stake-weirs ; but the peasants higher 
up the river still go in for the mediaeval process of 
" snatching " the fish — sturgeon or sterlet, for the only 
difference is that the sterlet is smaller — with a cork and 
bare hook. 

As soon as the thaws have finished, quite a fleet of the 
little home-made boats may be seen dotted about the 
quieter parts of the Volga, two men to a boat, one rowing 
and the other fishing. In spite of the sturgeon's being 
a ground feeder, he can often be persuaded to come to 
the surface, for he possesses a double portion of fish- 
inquisitiveness ; therefore long lines are not absolutely 
necessary. Ordinarily the peasant ties a piece of cork 
or light wood on his line, and, a few inches below it, a 
barbed hook as stout as a pot-hook. This he throws a 
good distance from his boat and waits till a fish rises. 
In the thick of the season he need not wait long, for a 
fish quickly comes up to investigate, and a skilful fisher- 
man will have jerked the hook into some part of its body 
long before its curiosity is satisfied. The larger fish are 
also harpooned. 

To a poor Russian the catching of a big sturgeon is 
almost a fortune, for every bit of it is valuable. It is no 
uncommon sight to see a peasant-fisherman rowing or 

165 



THE PILCHARD— THE STURGEON 

rafting down-stream to the nearest station with quite a 
cargo of these giants. Eaten fresh, the flesh is white and 
somewhat resembles veal. 

At the factory the fish is first carefully opened and 
cleaned ; the air-bladder and the roe being set aside, and 
the entrails removed to be boiled for oil. The bladder, 
after being freed from all greasy matter, is rendered down, 
md yields the purest gelatine that is to be found in the 
animal kingdom — a substance better known commercially 
as isinglass, which name is taken from the Dutch huizen 
bias, sturgeon bladder. 

A more important process relates to the roe ; the pro- 
curing of caviare. The roes, after they have been properly 
cleaned, are lightly beaten with twigs so that the eggs 
may be dislodged and separated ; then the whole mass is 
rubbed or pressed through a sieve till the eggs have all 
filtered into a tub below, the tissues of the roe remaining 
in the sieve. The eggs are then dried and salted. 

Lastly, the flesh is cut into strips which are laid for 
some weeks in brine-tanks and, when sufficiently salted, 
are smoked like bacon. 



166 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE CATCHING OF LOBSTERS, 
CRABS, AND WHELKS 

Fish that are caught in pots — The lobster — Colonial fish — The Bergen 
and Christiansund lobster-fishery — Cray-fish — Crabs — The hermit 
— Land crabs — Tropical and fresh-water crabs — Crabbing — Whelks 
— Fishing with "trots" — Whelking as a trade — The boats — The 
pots — The fish. 

LOBSTERS, crabs, and whelks are fish that, on 
account of their habits, their formation, and their 
general preference for deep water, require special 
gear before they can be taken in the large quantities that 
the market demands ; the name given to that form of 
gear is pots. 

None of these animals possess a very high degree of 
intelligence where escape from captivity is concerned, and 
all of them are as greedy and insatiable as sharks ; there- 
fore the trap that will catch them need not be a marvel 
of ingenuity. A lobster-pot is generally a wicker cage 
with a small opening ; sometimes it is dome-shaped, some- 
times oval ; often, again, it is formed like a soiled-linen 
basket with the middle or waist narrowed down to about 
a third of the original circumference. The lobster's own 
curiosity is sufficient to encourage it to " step inside " ; 
but to stimulate desire, a piece of meat or fish is laid or 

167 



THE CATCHING OF LOBSTERS 

suspended in the "belly' 1 of the pot, and the result is 
that, when the tackle has been down for a few hours, a 
store of struggling lobsters will be found lying at the 
bottom, for not one of them will have the good sense to 
try to get out by the way he came in. 

Lobsters are by no means so plentiful round these 
coasts as they used to be, no doubt because it is only 
comparatively lately that the law has troubled to protect 
them ; and the greater number of those sold at the shops 
come from Scandinavia. Nearly three-quarters of a 
million fish are imported from there every year. Scot- 
land, however, still seems to maintain her position as a 
lobster country, and the Orkneys and the Hebrides send 
from one to two hundred thousand fish in the course of a 
twelvemonth to Billingsgate. 

The canned lobsters, apart from those from Scandi- 
navia, come from Newfoundland and British Columbia. 
Latterly South Africa has also embarked in the tinned- 
lobster trade, and it is probable that the Cape Colony 
will not stop at lobsters, but will, in years to come, 
develop into one of the world's great fishing centres. 
Why not ? It has hundreds of miles of coast-line ; its 
latitude is about the same as that of Western Australia 
or Queensland ; above all, along the bank that runs out 
from Cape Agulhas, is the end of the cold current which 
sweeps down the east coast from Madagascar, and Avhich 
ensures a perennial and bountiful supply of fish. 

The chief Norwegian lobster export centres are Bergen 
and Christiansund, which two towns form the limits of a 
curved line of the oldest and perhaps most productive 

168 



CRABS, AND WHELKS 

lobster-grounds in the world. Here thousands of small 
boats are at work during the greater part of the year, for 
there are still few restrictions in regard to this fishery, 
though they are now being increased ; the bulk of the 
Norwegian lobsters, however, are caught between March 
and September. Most local by-laws forbid the taking 
of spawning fish, and of those which measure less than 
eight inches from " beak " to tail. 

There is no inducement to the fishermen to take small 
fish, for the large ones are generally plentiful enough ; 
the infant lobsters, moreover, are very careful to be out 
of the way. When a little one leaves its mother its shell 
is still unformed, and its body therefore unprotected, and, 
while in this condition, it is liable to be snapped up by 
the first cod or conger that comes along ; and if it should 
attempt to remain in a lobster colony it may expect to be 
eaten by adult fish of its own species ; therefore it wisely 
swims away to the shallows, finds a strong position for 
itself in a rock-crevice, and there remains till its shell 
hardens and the animal can return to open water without 
fear. Every year it will go back to this or a similar 
hiding-place, for lobsters lose their shells annually, and 
are, for three or four days, defenceless ; and it is during 
this shell-less period that much of their growth takes 
place. From the time a shell begins to re-form till it is 
quite hard, the lobster is said to be " soft," and if one 
finds its ways into the trap it is thrown out again, for 
the fishermen believe it to be poisonous. This is un- 
likely, although an animal that is about to cast its shell is 
undoubtedly sickly, and can scarcely be wholesome as food. 

169 



THE CATCHING OF LOBSTERS 

The pots are generally roped together, half a dozen or 
a dozen at a time ; a weight or a stone is put into each, 
and one after another is allowed to sink ; to the last one of 
the series a buoy-line is tied and its upper end fastened 
to a cork or keg. Sometimes the fish are so plentiful in 
one spot as to keep a large fleet of boats occupied the 
whole day in setting the tackle, and the catches are 
brought ashore literally by the boat-load. 

A cargo of live lobsters are not the most desirable of 
companions in a small boat ; an animal that has eight 
legs, and fangs like pincers, is a sort of thing one likes to 
keep at a distance ; for a nip of a lobster is rather like a 
burn from a hot iron. The legs are a very variable num- 
ber, for the lobster seems to have power to part with one 
when he likes ; take him by the claw and he will wriggle 
away, leaving the limb in your hand rather than allow 
himself to be captured. One of the most curious facts 
about the fish is its extreme sensitiveness to loud noises ; 
if a gun be fired close to it, it will shed some of its claws 
immediately, and the same thing will often happen during 
a thunderstorm. These limbs grow again in course of 
time. 

A very close relative of the lobster is the cray-fish or 
craw-fish, which most of us, as children, have caught in 
the rivers. Most of this species are small, but those 
of the Indian rivers as well as the celebrated Tasmanian 
cray are very large, and are eagerly sought by the local 
fishermen. 

Far more variety exists where the crab is concerned 
than among the lobsters. In common with the lobsters 

170 



CRABS, AND WHELKS 

it has four pairs of legs, and a fifth pair which are con- 
verted into nippers. Many naturalists are of opinion, 
from the shape of its feet, that it is properly a land 
animal; and this argument is strengthened by the fact 
that certain varieties live entirely on land. The common 
crab is nearly always a deep-water fish, except where, as 
for example, on the Cornish coast, the deep rock-pools 
on the shore promise it reasonable immunity from tres- 
passers ; and the same may be said of most of the in- 
edible crabs, the spider, the red crab, etc., many of which 
are never seen except on board a fishing-boat, when they 
have allowed themselves to be scooped up by a dredge, 
or have got themselves caught on a cod-hook. 

For some reason or other most of these fish seem to 
be inedible, for, beyond the common crab and its little 
shore brother, no British crabs are ever eaten. The 
others are nevertheless valuable as bait, and though they 
are not regarded as a special bait-fishery like mussels or 
Avhelks, the shrimpers contrive to do good business with 
a very large quantity of them. 

One of the finest bait-crabs is undoubtedly the hermit, 
or as the fishermen call it the " farmer, 11 for its soft, 
unprotected body is a great temptation to all fish. 
Hermits may be picked up on some beaches at low tide 
after rough weather, but the majority of those used for 
bait are bought of the dredgers, for whether they inter- 
fere with oysters or not, they are always found in large 
numbers where oysters most do congregate. While the 
upper part of the animal is as well protected by shell 
and nippers as that of the other crabs, the lower is quite 

171 



THE CATCHING OF LOBSTERS 

soft and pulpy. Guided by the marvellous instinct of 
self-protection, the little creature, as soon as it can fend 
for itself, seeks out some small shell into which it can 
fit the defenceless portion of its body, and, as it grows, 
it abandons the shell in favour of a larger one, changing 
its abode periodically till it comes to full size and can 
fill the shell of a very large whelk. 

One day I persuaded a hermit that was trying to crawl 
away through a port-hole, to come out of his shell, and 
then dropped him into a bucket of sea-water with his 
own whelk-shell and another a size smaller ; he crawled 
to the smaller one, examined it closely, but did not 
attempt to " fit it on " ; after a minute's hesitation he 
pushed it contemptuously away, moved over to the larger 
shell and, after a brief hesitation, back-watered into it, 
drew in his horns and settled down to sleep comfortably. 
In some parts of the world — Keeling Island, for instance 
— these hermits are to be seen waddling about on land. 

Talking of land-crabs, the largest and most extra- 
ordinary, as well as the most valuable kind, is the Birgos 
or purse crab, which is from two to three feet long and 
is an inhabitant of the East Indian Islands. This animal 
pays a daily visit to the sea, for the purpose of moistening 
its antenna?, but spends the rest of its time in its nest 
which is made at the root of a tree — generally a cocoa- 
nut palm. It burroAvs a large hole in the ground and 
lines it thickly with cocoa-nut fibre, thereby laying up 
a vast store of that useful material for the natives to 
avail themselves of. As food it is pronounced excellent 
by Europeans, but what is of more consequence to the 

172 



CRABS, AND WHELKS 

Malay fishermen is its oil ; each adult contains a huge 
lump of fat which yields a quart of pure oil. Whether 
these crabs actually climb the trees after the nuts on 
which they live is a disputed point which does not come 
within our province to settle. 

Another remarkable crab and, from the fisherman's 
point of view, the only useless one, is the glass crab of 
the tropical seas ; this creature is transparent and, but 
for its staring, blue-black eyes, would be invisible in the 
water. 

All readers may not be aware that there are such things 
as fresh-water crabs, quite distinct from the cray-fish. 
They are to be found in the Indian rivers as well as in 
many of those of South Europe ; in the latter they are 
caught with pots similar to lobster-traps ; the carapace or 
upper shell is almost square, and the antennas are 
curiously short. 

Here in England crabbing is scarcely a trade by itself, 
but is rather pursued in slack or leisure time ; the Cornish 
pilchard-fishers, for instance, fill in their intervals with 
such work. The most commonly used tackle is an iron 
hoop with two diametrical cords, crossing at right angles ; 
dependent from the hoop is a net-bag which bellies out 
till the circumference is nearly twice that of the hoop. 
The fisherman baits the trap with fish — generally ray — 
fastens a short bit of rope handle-wise across the frame, 
and lowers the pot by a long cord that is tied to the 
middle of the handle. When he feels the hoop touch the 
bottom he raises it again about a foot, so as to give free 
play to the net, and then makes his end fast to a buoy or 

173 



THE CATCHING OF LOBSTERS 

to his boat. For small-crab fishing less care is needed ; 
the pots are let down in a series, left for some hours and 
then pulled up again, and the catches thus made are 
sometimes enormous ; I have seen as many small crabs 
in one pot as would fill a peck measure. By small crabs 
I mean such as just come within legal limit, for the law 
is very sharp nowadays on the crabbers ; no fish that 
measures less than four and a quarter inches in length 
may be taken ; fishermen are also forbidden to take 
spawners, and crabs whose shell has not hardened ; for 
these fish assume a new shell every year just as the 
lobsters do. 

I spoke of crabs as bait. Whelks and crabs "se 
mangent entre eux " ; there are few things the one likes so 
much as a taste of the other ; but the odds are in favour 
of the crab, for it is only when his shell is soft, or after he 
is dead, that the whelk gets a fair chance at him. The 
fisherman comes along and, like the stork that settled the 
dispute between the frog and the mouse by eating the 
pair of them, catches the crabs and then uses them as 
bait to catch the whelks. This method of whelking by 
means of lines is the one least commonly known, and we 
must leave the consideration of pots to glance at it. 

Whelk-lines, generally termed " trots " or " bulters " 
(not to be confused with the " butters" mentioned in 
Chapter IV), are great favourites with the Thames-mouth 
fishermen. Each main line has short lines (called 
" snoods ") tied at right angles to it, at intervals of a few 
yards, and every short line has twenty tiny crabs fastened 
to it, each about six inches apart from the other. This 

i74 



CRABS, AND WHELKS 

tackle is shot in the same manner as the ordinary long 
lines, the far end buoyed, and the other either buoyed or 
kept in the boat. 

In a very short time the lines are alive with whelks, for 
their movements are quicker than those of land gastero- 
pods, and their appetites more ravenous. They fasten 
themselves on the unresisting crabs and, with their power- 
ful, toothed tongues, begin to eat through the shell ; 
when once they have taken the bait nothing will shake 
them off, and the little fools fall victims to their own 
greed. The strength of a whelk is enormous ; pick one 
up when he is crawling about the deck and try to hold 
him from withdrawing into his shell ; you cannot do it 
once in a hundred times. No wonder then that the 
pulling up of the trots does not shake off any of the 
catch from their prey. 

It may be surmised, from their being caught in such 
large numbers, that whelks are very prolific ; they are. 
When do you ever go to the seaside without seeing the 
spawn lying about ? It is contained in those irregular 
clumps or bunches of white, spongy-looking globules that 
are often taken for seaweed. Dog-whelk spawn is generally 
seen only in deep water and, instead of being bunched 
together, every capsule is distinct ; it is generally thrown 
on stones and rocks, and looks like a beautiful yelloAv 
growth or lichen, in shape and size not unlike heather 
blossom. 

Whelking is a trade by itself ; and it is a very lucrative 
one, partly because many men are frightened at the 
apparently low prices paid for the fish, and so steer clear 

i75 



THE CATCHING OF LOBSTERS 

of it, and allow the few to make their profit undisturbed ; 
and partly because whelks are never out of season either 
as food or bait. They are sold principally to the line- 
fishers of the north and east, not by the cart- or ship- 
load like mussels, but by the bushel or the bag. 

The most renowned whelkers are the Norfolk men, and 
where local feeling is not too strong against such a 
measure, they carry on what might otherwise be a 
neglected industry in other eastern and southern fishing 
grounds besides their own. As a rule they are not inter- 
fered with, for though fishermen are proverbially tenacious 
of their rights, they are seldom churlish. But the inter- 
lopers must mind their manners ; you may see a hundred 
pounds 1 worth of whelk -gear deliberately sunk by the 
lawful tenants of the ground if it has been shot so as 
to do harm to the local industry. Generally, however, 
the whelkers are regarded as harmless lunatics who 
"whelk" because they are fit for nothing else. 

One of the funniest things I ever saw in connection 
with the fishermen was their contempt for some whelkers 1 
boats brought to a southern fishing town from the 
Norfolk coast ; they were beautiful boats, too : large 
enough for lifeboats, and, when rigged with a big lug- 
sail, they could almost fly through the water. Then why 
the contempt ? Because they had been brought down by 
rail ! What good could any boat be that had arrived in 
such an ignominious fashion ? Scarcely any of these good 
fellows had ever been in a train — save one old dear who 
went to London once upon a time, and while there (not 
being able to read) " steered n himself about by means of 

176 



CRABS, AND WHELKS 

a pocket-compass and the weather-cocks, and whose 
method of finding a given spot was to "shape a course 
nor'-east," etc. After a day or two he shook the dust of 
London off his feet, because he was sure that wherever 
he went there was always a policeman following him ; 
whereas he "knowed he shouldn't be took for a thief 
down home. 1 ' 

These despised little boats go off every day with the 
ebb tide, and on reaching water whose depth at high tide 
would be about five fathoms, make ready to clear and re- 
lower the gear. The pulling up of the nearest buoy-line 
drags up the first few of the series of pots ; these are 
emptied one by one, and the cord is hauled and hauled 
till the whole row of pots — generally about fifty in 
number — lie empty in the boat. Then you can see that, 
attached to the buoy-lines, is a main or ground-rope, 
about a quarter of a mile in length, along which the pots 
are threaded at intervals of from three to five fathoms. 
The pots themselves are far more elaborate than those 
used for crabs or lobsters ; the upper part is a dome made 
of thin strips of iron, and its base is a perforated iron 
disc from which depends a little net bag capable of 
holding two gallons. Round the dome, a cord — the 
" rattling line " — is laced loosely, and acts as a ladder up 
which the whelks climb to reach the bait that is lying on 
the sieve-like base, through which they will fall into the 
net below. 

The pots are soon rebaited and thrown over again, and 
the boat sails away to her next buoy. You can see now 
why such a capacious craft must be employed ; one series 

M 177 



LOBSTERS, CRABS, AND WHELKS 

of pots if full would yield about twelve bushels of whelks ; 
and a fair average catch from five series would be forty 
bushels. The fish are stowed in bags and sent away by 
rail. 

It may be asked, what need is there for making a 
special fishery of whelks when the dredgers land such a 
great number ? The dredgers do indeed, when their own 
catches are poor, pick out the whelks and put them aside 
for selling ; but it is rather like a private householder 
saving his empty wine-bottles for sale; the proceeds of 
small quantities are so ridiculously low that only a miserly 
or very poor man would trouble to keep them ; and the 
dredger who can earn from six to ten shillings a day is 
not likely to neglect his own work for the sake of a gain 
of about fivepence -halfpenny. 

Whelks as seen in London on a costermonger's barrow 
would, I think, only tempt a very hungry man, or one 
whose appetite had a strange bias ; yet these fish are a 
favourite food among the fisher people, and, from the 
fact that a man will often do a hard day^ work on nothing 
else, they must needs be nourishing. Boiled the moment 
they come out of the sea, and eaten hot with a sea- 
appetite, they are certainly very good, and, inasmuch as 
the intestine can be removed, are much safer and cleaner 
eating than crabs or lobsters. There is a member of this 
family, called the red whelk, which is very tasty but, ac- 
cording to the fishermen, very disastrous in its effect on 
the eater ; they say that a plateful of such fish will make 
a man absolutely intoxicated. 



178 



CHAPTER XV 
THE FISHERIES OF THE FAR EAST 

China, Japan, Siam, etc. — A fish-eating people — Fresh-water fishing — 
Chinese angling — Fishing with the help of cormorants — How the 
birds are trained— Good and bad divers — Two birds to one fish — 
The dip-net — River-fishing by hand — Sea fisheries ; the junk and 
the lorcha — A Portuguese colony — "Archers " and "fighting-fish " 
— Japan's fisheries — The salmon and trout. 

UNDER the above heading we may include the 
fisheries of China and Japan, together with those 
of Siam, Annam, and Malacca. 
It may not be easy for us Europeans to realise that the 
inhabitants of these countries are even more a fishing 
people than ourselves. Nevertheless they are. The fact 
could doubtless be demonstrated and explained in scores 
of different ways ; but it is sufficient for us to remember 
that (1) the people of the Far East are, as a whole, of 
a somewhat timid disposition, and consequently less in- 
clined to take to hunting than the men of the West ; (2) 
for the most part their climate is against the consump- 
tion of much flesh meat ; and, in any case, a large pro- 
portion of the inhabitants would abstain from it on 
religious grounds. Hence a disposition to live on vege- 
table produce ; and to eke out or savourise such diet with 
fish would surely be instinct to a seaboard people. Japan 

179 



THE FISHERIES OF THE FAR EAST 

is surrounded by water ; Malacca and Corea nearly so ; 
China, Siam, and Annam are washed by the sea as well 
as drained by huge, fish- teeming rivers ; and the inhabi- 
tants of the three last-named have, for centuries, cultivated 
the art of fresh-water fishing to an infinitely greater 
extent than can be seen in any other part of the world. 
Fish is cheap, moreover, and Easterns are economically 
inclined. Next to rice, therefore, fish must be regarded 
as the staple food of these temperate folk, and the pro- 
curing of it as one of their most important occupations. 

Fresh-water fishing as carried on by the Chinese is 
anything but a laborious industry ; on the other hand 
it offers ample opportunity for meditation and rest ; and, 
as a large proportion of the population spend their lives 
on the water, they have not far to look for their dinner. 

The approved Celestial method of angling has its 
peculiarities. The fisherman provides himself with two 
or more slender bamboo rods, each of which is supplied 
with rings for the line to pass through, such as our own 
rods have, and also with a homely attempt at a winch. 
His lines would make a British angler envious ; they are 
of the finest silk, deftly twisted, and scarcely thicker than 
a hair; yet of wonderful strength and durability. His 
hooks are not so likely to be coveted by Europeans, for 
they are of the bent-pin order, being destitute of barbs. 
Each line has a short bit of wood tied on to it in place 
of a float, fastened only by one end, so that it will merely 
lie on the water instead of standing perpendicularly. 

Seated on his raft, or on the bank, the Chinaman very 
methodically prepares for his morning's work. With the 

1 80 



THE FISHERIES OF THE FAR EAST 

point of one of the rods he first carefully separates the 
weeds and leaves on the surface of the water, and brushes 
aside, or flicks off", the heads of lotos that may be in his 
way. As soon as he sees a clear field, in goes his first 
hook, baited with a fly ; or, if ground-fishing, probably 
with a strip of kid or morsel of paste. Then he places 
the butt of the rod in a holder ready prepared and pro- 
ceeds to make his second cast. This holder is a short 
length of bamboo, the hollow of which will just fit the 
end of the fishing-rod ; and is driven into the bank, or 
lashed to the side of the raft, so that it will keep the rod 
at an angle of about thirty degrees to the water. 

But how this casual individual ever succeeds in catching 
anything at all is one of the hidden things. Apparently 
he is asleep half his time ; we do not see him make any 
attempt at watching bait or float, or at playing his fish ; 
yet he seldom pulls up the line without there being a fish 
at the end of it. Above all, as often as not it is a dace ; 
and anglers do not need to be told that this is an 
exceedingly sharp biter which requires to be struck 
immediately. 

Each time John takes a fish off the hook he stoops and 
seems to put it back into the water at his feet. But if 
you watch him when he leaves off work you will see him 
drag out a large bamboo basket that has been kept in 
the water with only the rim showing above the surface. 
As the basket comes up, the water naturally is drained off', 
and the Chinaman has fresh fish for sale or private con- 
sumption, instead of flabby things that have been exposed 
to several hours of scorching sun. 



THE FISHERIES OF THE FAR EAST 

A more characteristic and better -known system of 
fishing among the Mongols is with the aid of cormorants. 
Anyone who has ever taken the trouble to watch one of 
these curious birds dive must see that they are capable 
of being made splendid allies to the fisherman ; and the 
Mongolian peoples have succeeded in taming and training 
the creatures till they can be relied upon to fill their 
master's bag in a very short space of time. Early in the 
seventeenth century an attempt was made to introduce 
cormorant-fishing into England as a sport, but it does 
not seem to have met with much success. 

When the bird is quite young a ring, or a collar of 
grass, is fastened round its neck, so tightly that, though 
it can still breathe, it can only swallow a very small 
article. A cord, or sometimes a pair of reins, is attached 
to the collar and, with much coaxing or smacking, the 
master sends the little one into the water. Ordinarily its 
instinct will prompt it to dive and to seize in its bill as 
large a fish as it can lift ; and as soon as it comes to the 
surface it is smartly hauled in, informed that it is a good 
bird, and made to deliver up its prey. As it progresses 
in knowledge the cord is dispensed with ; and the bird, 
still tightly collared, has to learn to enter and leave the 
water at a sign of the hand ; and when its education is 
complete, the collar is sometimes removed as well, by 
which time no well-bred cormorant would think of 
swallowing a fish unless its master had given permission. 

The cormorant is usually started from a boat, or a 
moored raft, a long, low-lying construction made of the 
eternal bamboo, and propelled by one paddle. Each 

182 




Stereo Copyright, Undenvood &• U. 



London and New York 



Fishing with Cormorants in China 

A characteristic method of fishing among the Mongols is with the aid of cormorants. 
These birds are capable of being made splendid allies to the fishermen, who have tamed 
and trained them till they can be relied upon to fill their master's bag in a very short 
time. 



THE FISHERIES OF THE FAIl EAST 

fisherman has about half a dozen birds — among them, 
perhaps, a couple of "apprentices' 1 — and these have all 
arranged themselves in a row at one end of the raft with 
their eyes solemnly fixed on their master. With a wave 
of the hand or a snap of the fingers, he summons the 
first ; it waddles up to him and jumps on to his open 
hand. Petting it and gently smoothing its feathers, the 
fisherman seems to whisper confidentially to the bird ; 
then places it on the edge of the raft and stands by to 
await developments. 

Then the cormorant dips its bill into the water once or 
twice, jerks its head from side to side, gives a shake to its 
tail, and suddenly disappears. Meanwhile the other birds, 
huddled together in a perfectly straight line, look on, ex- 
pectant of a summons from their master. After an inter- 
val of about a quarter of a minute the diver reappears at 
some distance from where it went in, holding in its mouth 
a struggling fish of the dace or roach tribes. It swims 
over to the raft, springs aboard, hops lightly on to the 
fisherman's knee, and is relieved of its burden ; and the 
master, having placed the fish in the basket, goes through 
the same endearments as before, and again puts the bird 
on the raft-edge. The same thing happens again, and 
perhaps three or four times over, till, thinking the bird 
has done enough, the fisherman once more caresses it and 
deposits it in the middle of the raft ; this is a sign that 
the faithful creature may take a rest ; and, full of pride 
at its exploits, it struts away to the opposite side, where 
it takes up a position on the rail and stares superciliously 
at its friends that are still waiting their turn. 

183 



THE FISHERIES OF THE FAIt EAST 

Bird Number 2 is beckoned; affecting ceremony as 
before ; but, when its head comes above water, its bill is 
still empty and it looks hesitatingly towards the raft, 
though not daring to approach it without leave. The 
master shakes his head reproachfully and points down- 
wards, and the bird dives resignedly. This time it is 
down longer, yet once more comes up empty-mouthed ; 
but the fisherman is inexorable and the cormorant is 
bidden to dive a third time — and a third time comes up 
with nothing. Celestial patience cannot brook this; 
clearly bird Number 2 is a duffer; the man beckons it 
out of the water, spanks it soundly about the head, and 
tosses it on to the deck, whence it waddles shamefacedly 
away and takes a place of dishonour at the end of the 
rank. 

Bird Number 3 obeys the call in a sprightly fashion 
and dives the moment it is released, without any useless 
preliminaries. It is down a whole minute or more. 
Then, some thirty feet from the raft, the surface is seen 
to bubble and ripple, and suddenly the little black head 
rises above water ; bird Number 3 has caught some kind 
of salmon, over a foot long, and so heavy that every now 
and then it drags the plucky head under again. The 
fisherman mutters a cheering word and snaps his fingers 
in the direction of bird Number 4, which is started off 
in the usual manner. 4, however, does not dive ; it 
swims straight at 3 and, seizing the river-monster near 
the tail, sets 3's mind and bill at rest ; and the industrious 
pair paddle steadily for the raft, supporting the weight 
between them. Even now there is a danger lest the fish 

184 



THE FISHERIES OF THE FAR EAST 

should escape, to which the fisherman puts an end by 
leaning over as soon as the birds come within reach and 
relieving them of their burden. 

When it is the turn of the " apprentices " to go in, the 
procedure is different. Probably the cord is fastened on, 
and the bird is driven in by dint of much clapping of 
hands on the part of the fisherman. Then, perhaps, 
instead of diving, the cormorant will merely stare round 
in bewildered fashion till the master, with a long rod, 
guides it away from the boat, and, if it still remain 
obstinate, plunges it bodily under with the end of the 
stick. Some men, in addition to bridling the young 
birds, fasten a cord round the body, leaving a loop like a 
kettle-handle at the top to serve the purpose of lifting 
the creature in and out. 

When this species of fishing is carried on by night, a 
brazier or a lighted torch is fixed at one end of the raft, 
where it not only enables the fisherman to see what he is 
doing, but also acts as a bait, appealing to the everlast- 
ing curiosity of the fish which rise "to worship the 
delusive flame," as Shelley expresses it. 

A third variety of bank and raft fishing is by means of 
a very large dip-net, made of twine or spruce-fibre. The 
gear, weighted with stones, is lowered by a single rope 
which runs out over the head of a wooden lever and is 
left down for an hour or so ; at the end of that time the 
lever is weighed up till the mouth of the net comes just 
above water, then the fishermen, armed with small 
landing-nets fitted to long handles, proceed at leisure to 
bale out the contents. 

185 



THE FISHERIES OF THE FAR EAST 

Yet another way, the most primitive of all, is by catch- 
ing the fish with the hands — a practice easily possible in 
shallow streams and pools that are literally alive with 
fish. The operator wades in hip-deep, and this at once 
stirs up the fish that are on the bottom, which is just the 
reverse of what the wader wants ; and, as a counterblast, 
lie slaps and splashes the water till they go down again 
and hide in the mud ; whereupon, using his feet as feelers, 
he coolly stoops and picks the fish out of it, filling the 
bag that hangs on his shoulder in a very few minutes. 

There are few specially noteworthy features of the 
Chinese salt-water fisheries. All the way down the coast 
of the Yellow and China Seas, fleets of junks manned by 
Coolies, Chinamen, and Lascars, are to be seen daily ; 
they do not go far from land, partly because there is 
little need, partly through centuries of habit of giving a 
wide berth to Japanese and Malay pirates. 

The junk, without doubt the oldest-fashioned craft in 
the world, is a not unpicturesque, flat-bottomed vessel with 
one sail, similar to our lug-sail in shape, but ribbed all the 
way down with parallel cane yards, which apparently can 
be used for reefing. Some of the more go-ahead boat- 
builders have during the past century attempted to im- 
prove on the junk by the construction of the lorcha, a 
boat made after the European model, though still rigged 
like the older vessel. 

At and round Macao, on the Canton River, is a colony 
of Portuguese, founded as far back as 1586, and similar 
to that mentioned in Chapter X, in so far as many of its 

1 86 



THE FISHERIES OF THE FAR EAST 

people are hereditary fishermen who have partially intro- 
duced European methods of working, and have made 
themselves the centre of the fishing-trade for many miles 
round. 

In the China Sea and parts of the Indian Ocean is a 
remarkable little fish known as the " archer," and when- 
ever it makes its appearance in the net it is jealously set 
aside in a pot of water by some member of the crew. In 
their idle moments the men will even angle for it when 
they are sufficiently far from land. It is about seven 
inches long and has a wide, ugly mouth, the lower jaw of 
which is considerably longer than the upper ; it feeds on 
flies and insects and has an almost infallible means of 
catching them. Swimming near the surface it watches for 
the approach of its prey and, the moment this comes in 
sight, squirts a jet of water straight at it ; this manoeuvre 
brings the prize down to the surface, and all the archer 
has to do is to swallow it. When such a fish is caught, it 
is taken home and kept in a jar as a household play- 
thing, its owner amusing himself by suspending a fly 
on a string over the jar, for the entertainment of its 
occupant. 

In the rivers of Siam and Annam is a somewhat smaller 
creature, though none the less remarkable ; the " fighting- 
fish, 1 '' which is as carefully angled for and treasured as the 
archer. When taken, it is preserved in a bowl and kept 
for fighting. Two of them, let loose in a shallow tank, 
will afford as much amusement as fighting-cocks gave to 
our grandfathers ; and, like them, the bystanders bet 
heavily on the issue of the struggle. In Siam such fights 

187 



THE FISHERIES OF THE FAR EAST 

are specially licensed by the Government, and seem to 
prove a fruitful source of revenue. 

Japan, more ready to follow Western nations than its 
neighbours, takes her fisheries very much in earnest. The 
European trawl-net is in use, as also the various forms of 
seine, though we cannot expect to find anything answer- 
ing to our notions of a smack ; for the Japanese fishers 
have no medium between the most up-to-date steam- 
trawler and the old-fashioned junk. The latter is slightly 
different in make and rig from the Chinese boat. It has 
no bulwarks beyond a shallow plank ; is built rather high, 
and has immense storing accommodation below decks. 
At the very top of the mast is a bamboo yard from 
which hangs the sail, plain, oblong, divided from top to 
bottom, and so long that it almost sweeps the deck. 
Another very common fishing-boat of native build, 
though latterly of European rig, is the sampcm. 

The maguro, a large, salmon-fleshed fish, the cod, 
mackerel, and a variety of sea-bream called the tai, are 
the commoner fish taken in the nets ; the last-named is 
more often eaten raw than cooked, and either way it is 
very appetising. I once saw the tai served up raw, 
sprinkled with vinegar and herbs ; and the very next 
course was the same fish cooked, — stewed in a sort of 
soupe au vin. 

The chief fishing ports are Hakodate, Nagasaki, and 
Yokohama; in fact, till 1859, Yokohama had no other 
occupation than fishing. 



THE FISHERIES OF THE FAR EAST 

The inshore fisheries include weirs of a sort, together 
with a system of dip-nets not unlike those in use among 
the Chinese river-fishers. The fisherman erects a rough 
scaffolding above the water, over which a thatched roof 
is placed as a shelter from the sun ; and from here he 
lowers a huge, oblong net which is drawn into concave 
form by cords, and kept open by a framework made of 
two curved, intersecting poles. Connected with the 
framework is a wooden lever, by means of which the 
whole net can be quickly weighed out of the water. 

As soon as the net is down, the fisherman waits 
patiently till the fish collect over the spot where he has 
lowered his tackle, and then suddenly jerks the edges of 
the net above water ; then, like the Chinaman, he ladles 
his catch out with a smaller dip-net, hauls the fish up to 
his platform, and packs them away in his basket. 

But the Japanese are by no means mere stay-at-home 
fishers ; almost all the Corean coast-fishery is in their 
hands, and sealing boats put off every season from 
Hakodate for the Kurile Islands at the far north, and 
even for Kamchatka. Moreover, the little country's 
exportation of fish-oil is steadily on the increase. 

In their river-fishing, too, Western principles have 
come largely into use, though the cormorant is still very 
popular among the peasantry and the old-fashioned 
native sportsmen. Trout are found abundantly in all the 
streams, and in the north, salmon are exceedingly plenti- 
ful. In angling for the ai (a large kind of trout) and the 
masu, or Japanese salmon, before the tackle is thrown, 
the native fishermen catch a handful of small fry, some- 

189 



THE FISHERIES OF THE FAR EAST 

thing like our young roach, in a landing-net, and fastening 
a string to each, pull them up and down in the water to 
attract the larger fish. 

The Ishikari-gawa is the favourite salmon river, and 
its reputation has now become so great as to cause both 
English and American sportsmen to make periodical 
pilgrimages to it. 



190 



CHAPTER XVI 

SOME REMARKS ON THE IRISH 
FISHERIES 

Comparative poverty of the western fisheries — Possible reasons 
— Present state of the Irish fisheries — The Irish fisherman — 
Trawling and long-line fishing — Congers, sharks, and sea-cats 
— Trawling on rocky ground — " Man overboard ! " — Ling, halibut, 
and ray — Eels — Tory Island. 

IF one had space and leisure to dive into the matter, 
there are doubtless good reasons to be found for the 
fact that the western portions of the United Kingdom 
cannot compare with those of the east for productive 
fisheries. Where is the western fishing town that can 
be mentioned in the same breath with Aberdeen, Grimsby, 
Lowestoft, Yarmouth, or even Ramsgate ? Yet the 
Irish Sea, the Channels and the Atlantic generally are 
surely as well adapted for the work as the German 
Ocean ; for if the rainfall be greater, the wind is just 
as favourable to the smacks as it is on the east ; often 
more so. 

It is certainly not that the men of the east are neces- 
sarily more careful over money-matters than the men of 
the west ; for much of the talk about the " thrifty 
fisher-class " is so much foolish cant ; with the exception 

191 



SOME REMARKS ON 

of the Scotch, and of the Cornish and the Welsh — who, 
by the way, are westerns — a more foolishly improvident 
class than the fishermen scarcely exists, no matter which 
point of the compass they come from ; if a trawler earns 
ten pounds in one week, the chances are that he will not 
have a halfpenny by the end of the next. I am well 
aware that there are exceptions, and that in every fishing 
town there are generally one or two wealthy men who 
have made every penny of their money in the boats. 

What is much nearer being the reason is that the per- 
centage of Danish, Saxon, and Jutish blood is far greater 
in the east, and that for one western Rolf Ganger or 
Ragna Rough-breeks, the east coast can produce twenty 
Hengists, and Gorm Ethelstans and Herewards ; and that 
therefore the inclination to a sea life is far stronger in 
the Yorkshire man or the Norfolk man than it is in the 
average Kelt. To this must be added the fact that the 
power of steady work is sadly wanting in some of the 
fishing people of the west ; at any rate among the Irish, 
Welsh, and Manx. 

Five-and-twenty years ago the fisheries of Ireland were 
apparently in an almost hopeless condition, but to-day 
things are certainly on the mend. Much has been done. 
Government has built piers and harbours, has made 
grants or loans to the fishers, and, even as far back 
as 1875, had begun to spend large sums in encouraging 
the industry generally. If you ask an Irish fisherman 
why trade is so bad he will tell you that the mackerel 
have all gone away, and that the Scotch and Devon- 
shire trawlers have broken up the herring shoals ; but 

192 



THE IRISH FISHERIES 

the Board of Trade reports say very differently ; to 
wit, that shoals of both herring and mackerel have been 
allowed to pass the coasts through the indolence of the 
fishermen and the scarcity of nets ; and that, till the 
"foreign 11 trawlers came, soles, which often abound 
round there, were never caught at all. Twenty years 
ago lobsters and crabs could almost have been shovelled 
on board the smacks round the west coast of Ireland, 
and such may still be the case. 

Out of a population of four and a half millions, twelve 
thousand people are now engaged in fishing ; the trade 
is controlled by a Congested Board, and the coast is 
divided up into centres, of which Dublin, Cork, Sligo, 
and Galway are the chief. 

Every imaginable form of craft may be seen in these 
waters, cutters and luggers being the most popular ; and 
the crews include negroes, Welshmen, Englishmen, Manx- 
men, and an occasional woman. The typical Hibernian 
fisherman is not the same being on land as he is at sea. 
Once persuade him to buckle to his work, once let him 
get on board his smack, and his seamanship and his energy 
would be a valuable object-lesson to some of the East 
Coast men. He is not infrequently a bold romancer — 
I have seldom met an Irish fisherman who had not, at 
some period of his existence, caught a conger that had at 
least ten other eels in its stomach, graduated and arranged 
like the wooden puzzle eggs that the London hawkers 
sell, one inside the other ; and he will sometimes do 
what the East Coast and Cornish fishers strongly set their 
faces against, take beer or whisky on board ; but, these 

N 193 



SOME REMARKS ON 

peculiarities apart, he is a splendid fellow at sea, whose 
unfailing courage and brilliant flashes of inspiration will 
help him to steer round rocks and currents like the best 
pilot that ever sailed out of harbour. 

To see him at his best you want to watch him trawling 
or line-fishing under an English or Scotch skipper whose 
rule is " no beer on board." Plaice, mullet, hake, sole, 
turbot, these are what he is trawling for and, with a 
good wind, what he will catch ! If he is line-fishing he 
wants ling and halibut and cod. Often one gear takes 
fish that is expected in the other ; turbot and brill will 
sometimes swarm on the lines ; or a couple of huge 
congers will wriggle about in the trawl. The lines are 
probably hand-lines ; for not many Irish families would 
give up a whole day or more to the baiting of a creel- 
full of hooks. 

I have never met the man who could truthfully say 
that he liked conger-fishing ; if a conger should come up 
in the trawl, nobody cares much how soon it worms its 
way through a port-hole and out into the sea again. One 
would almost as soon have a boa-constrictor for a fellow- 
passenger ; many a fisherman can show horrible scars 
caused by the bite of one of these gentry. Fancy having 
a thing that weighs nearly a hundredweight, is thicker 
than a man's arm, and more than eight feet long, going 
about on deck seeking whom he may devour ! They are 
as savage and voracious as sharks, and do undoubtedly 
devour their own brethren, though not in the orderly 
manner quoted above. If they once get their teeth into 
anything, even decapitation will not loose them, and the 

194 



THE IRISH FISHERIES 

Irishman was no fancll fictor who said that he had seen 
the jaws of a bodiless head prised open with a chisel and 
pincers before the arm which they had bitten could be set 
free. 

The South Ireland conger-fishing is done by hand-lines, 
with a pilchard or a small herring as bait. The fish are 
caught at night, generally from luggers or rowing-boats, 
and a knife is driven through their heads before they can 
get into mischief. 

The west and south coasts are only good in certain 
places for trawling ; here and there a beautiful sand-bed 
will offer itself, where the trawl-heads can glide along as if 
they were going over a ballroom floor. Then up come 
the mullet and turbot and plaice as fast as you like, and 
our Irishman rubs his hands as he reflects that at least a 
fortnight's immunity from work will accrue from to-day's 
catch. Sometimes a small mountain of plaice only is shot 
out of the trawl ; good, honest seven-pounders — a reason- 
able weight for such fish, though they sometimes reach 
fifteen pounds. 

The reason why plaice appear more often in the trawl 
than the majority of other fish, is because they are such 
poor swimmers ; they have no swimming-bladders, and 
consequently keep pretty much along the bottom, where 
they find their food — molluscs chiefly, and baby skate — 
and so are swept in by the foot-rope of the trawl where 
swifter fish would escape. 

Another fish frequently taken in Irish waters is the 
" mackerel-guide," more properly known as the gar-fish. 
This is really a kind of salt-water pike, but it tastes 

195 



SOME REMARKS ON 

wonderfully like mackerel; it has gained its nickname 
on account of its being so frequently found at the head 
of a shoal of mackerel that are coming into the shallows 
to spawn. 

Sometimes, among the heaving mass that is being 
turned over and sorted, a broad sheet of light grey shows 
itself, and a big tail pokes its way through a crowd of 
smaller fry and lashes itself irritably up and down, thus 
displaying dark stripes along the lower part of the body 
to which it belongs. Every man instinctively snatches up 
his knife or a bit of wood and prepares to defend himself. 

" 'Tis a sea-cat ; look out ! " shouts everybody in one 
breath ; and, as the spiteful monster raises its ugly head 
and opens its mouth, a prudent fisherman salutes it with 
a cut across the nose, or pins it down to the deck with a 
knife-blade. This unlovely creature — sea-cat, cat-fish, 
or wolf-fish — is a vicious beast, whose bite is " ten degrees 
worse, 11 as the fishermen say, than a conger's ; at any rate 
it is often more painful, and some even maintain that it 
is poisonous. The fish is about six feet long, its flesh is 
much prized by the poorer classes, and its skin is so 
tough and durable that the Scotch and Irish fishers make 
bags of it. It is exceedingly savage, and will snap at 
anyone who goes near it. 

The stranger on board an Irish smack need not be 
astonished or alarmed at seeing an occasional monster 
thirty feet long, lying on the water, or even inquisitively 
shoving his muzzle over the taffrail. 

"An 1 indeed it's no shark at all ; 'tis a sun-fish, surr, 11 
the Irishman will tell him ; generally adding a rider to 

196 



THE IRISH FISHERIES 

the effect that it is more peaceable than any kitten. But 
it is a shark all the same, let Patrick call it what he 
likes ; the basker, which, in warm weather, spends most 
of its days lying almost on the water-surface as though 
revelling in the sun's rays. It is as strong as a whale, 
but undoubtedly quite harmless, and no fisherman ever 
takes any notice of it. 

These western and southern beds are very treacherous 
to the poor trawlers, and a skipper who does not know 
every square yard of the bottom had better keep clear 
of them. Sometimes, while on such a sand-bed as we 
have just been peacefully drifting over, there will be a 
sudden, violent jerk on the boat — the higher the wind the 
more this will be perceived. Sometimes she will lie over 
for a moment like a yacht tacking; the skipper springs 
across to the helm and puts the boat about, shouting 
directions to the crew and, if he be a humorist, which 
most of these fellows are, observing that they have 
" netted a rock." In a fairly high wind the towlines 
have been known to snap when this has taken place ; 
then, of course, all hope of saving the gear is at an end. 
As it is, the smack must, if possible, get to the farther 
side of the rock and tow the net backwards from under 
it — an impossible feat if the wind chooses to be contrary ; 
at best it will be something like trying to turn a hay-cart 
in a narrow lane. 

Then the trawl is winched up, and the extreme light- 
ness of it tells a sorry tale ; the net is certainly empty 
or nearly so, and, as the beam is taken on board, it may 
be seen that the net hangs straight and flat in the water 

i97 



SOME REMARKS ON 

like a limp rag. Impatiently the men snatch at it, in 
a hurry to know the worst. Down in the " cod " of the 
trawl are a few plaice and brill, but above it is a rent 
four feet long, which has doubtless been caused by some 
sharp rock when the foot-rope was jerked free from the 
mass under which it had slid. Then out come the net- 
ting tools, and the busy crew hastily, yet neatly, repair 
the damage, thanking the saints, meanwhile, that it is 
no worse ; and once more the tackle is thrown over. 

But all this turning about has thrown some of the men 
off their guard, and, as the main-sail flies round, one of 
them gets the boom full across his chest. For a second 
his head is muffled in the swelling sail, and then, before 
anyone knows what is happening, there is a splash, 
followed by the shout, " Old Jack's overboard ! 11 

That " man-overboard " cry is a far more awful sound 
than italics or marks of exclamation can make it appear ; 
I have heard it once and am not anxious to hear it again. 
Sometimes even practised sailors seem for the moment 
to be paralysed by it, although it is not absolutely an 
uncommon occurrence in rough weather, or when another 
smack comes along and steals the wind from your boat 
so that your main-sail recoils suddenly. 

One man " unships " his sea-boots and sou''- wester, 
another stands by with a boat-hook, a third with a rope. 
It is on these occasions that you realise that, however 
bitter enemies men may be in everyday life, one is ready 
enough to help another unhesitatingly when there is any 
fear of death. But, in this case, there is no call for senti- 
ment or sacrifice ; a very soused-looking head comes above 

198 



THE IRISH FISHERIES 

water, makes some unintelligible remarks, and then a 
young fisherman leans over the bulwarks, grabs the 
drenched man by the neck and shouts laughingly, " IVe 
got the old chap ! " and in a minute he is hauled on deck. 
But such easy escapes are not necessarily the rule. 

If the torn net cannot be repaired, or if the ground is 
too hopelessly rocky to risk another shot with the trawl, 
the men will sometimes make good their day's work by 
throwing in what lines they have on board, hastily baited 
with the most likely fish they happen to have caught. 

Line-fishing here is fairly lucrative, for it can be done 
at almost any time ; and in Ireland, as in other Catholic 
countries, the demand for fish is very great — greater than 
the trawlers alone could supply, even if they went off 
more regularly ; and the huge halibut and ling that come 
up on the hooks are easily gutted and salted. Ling are 
not quite so common here as further north ; the Hebrides, 
and perhaps the Orkneys, are the best grounds ; still, a 
very large number may be taken by the Cork and Water- 
ford men. " Ling '" is simply another form of the Dutch 
or Saxon " lang," and the name was applied to this fish 
because it was regarded as merely a long hake ; the 
Germans still call it the "long fish.''' It is of the same 
family as the cod, and is from three to four feet long ; its 
markings are rather pretty ; the belly is silvery, and the 
back anything from grey to olive-green ; all its fins are 
tipped with white, and the tail has a black bar across it. 

Halibut are a much larger fish, and weigh anything up 
to three and even five hundred pounds, and sometimes 
measure six feet from tip to tail. They are flat, ugly 

199 



SOME REMARKS ON 

creatures, with teeth not only in their mouths but in 
their throats, and having both their eyes on one side. 

The Irish fishermen devote much of their line-fishing 
time to rays and eels ; the eels they sell, and the rays 
either form their own food or are used by them as bait 
for crabs and lobsters. Rays are better known to the 
consumer as skate and, to the fishermen, as " roker " ; they 
may be seen on the fishmongers 1 slabs almost any time 
between July and April. It is said that there are no less 
than eleven species of them round the Irish coast. They 
are cartilaginous, like the shark or the sturgeon, and 
their flesh is very popular among the poorer classes ; for 
some reason London and Dublin seem to consume as 
much of this fish as all the fishing towns put together. 

The Irishmen are only administering poetic justice 
when they catch the ray as crab and lobster bait, for no 
fish plays more havoc among the Crustacea ; it will crunch 
up a big crab, sometimes shell and all, with no trouble 
whatever, and will lie in wait near the rocks on the 
chance of a meal of lobster or shrimps. No fish requires 
more careful handling, whether it comes up on a line or 
in a trawl, for most species are armed along the back with 
tough spines, and, in defending itself, the ray bends its 
body in a bow and lets itself spring back with frightful 
force, often causing very serious wounds with its spikes ; 
" thorn-back " is another name under which it is known 
by the fishermen. 

Eel-catching in both fresh and salt water is a popular 
occupation among these fishermen ; their tackle varies 
with the neighbourhood and time of year. A most 

200 



THE IRISH FISHERIES 

ghastly method is by means of " needle-tackle." One or 
two stout needles are buried in the body of a worm and 
the line is tied round the whole ; this is sunk with a stone 
or plummet and is extraordinarily successful in working, 
for eels are no less greedy than other fish, and, once the 
bait is snapped up, the points are safe to lodge some- 
where, so that the needles act as a fixed cross-bar, to 
which the line is immovably fastened. This is for 
summer fishing. In the rivers and lakes, night-lines are 
also let down, but this is not regarded as a legitimate 
form of fishing — at any rate by the gamekeepers. 

At the approach of winter the eels either bury them- 
selves in the mud or migrate to the estuaries like that of 
the Shannon, or sometimes into the open sea. If they 
stay in the mud they are soon " forked out " with an eel- 
spear — an instrument with several prongs, which is fitted 
to a long, slender handle ; but if they reach the estuaries, 
the taking of them ceases to be a sport and becomes an 
industry. Eel-pots are laid down in series after the 
fashion of the crab-pots, across the current, and are 
cleared and rebaited every morning. The traps are very 
ingeniously constructed ; they are of wicker and shaped 
like a narrow-mouthed gallipot ; the funnel-like entrance 
is made of springy, flexible sticks which radiate towards a 
common centre — a hole as big round as a shilling. The 
eel has no difficulty in forcing its way through this open- 
ing, for the springs bend back most obligingly ; but they 
shut to again after the fish has passed through, and he 
has no sort of chance of ever getting out any more. 

The Ulster fishermen are naturally very different from 

201 



REMAItKS ON IRISH FISHERIES 

the genuine Irishmen, most of them being of English 
or Scotch descent ; and they are far more thrifty and 
business-like than the men whose country has adopted 
them. 

On Tory Island — an islet three miles long and less 
than a mile broad, which lies about ten miles north-east 
of the Bloody Foreland, there is a tiny colony of real 
Irish fishers ; these are they who, it is reported, feed their 
cattle on fish. They and the Donegal men who fish 
between Lough Swilly and the Foreland, have an excep- 
tionally dangerous ground upon which to work, for there, 
apart from the awful, rocky reef that runs out from Tory, 
the Atlantic can be its roughest, so much so that often 
no boat can pass from the island to the mainland for five 
or six weeks at a time. The islanders are therefore 
obliged to store their fish alive in salt-water reservoirs, 
and perhaps it is from this fact that Irish fishermen have 
been accused of tethering valuable fish like soles and 
turbots by the tail, and letting them swim about till the 
steam-carrier comes to fetch them. 



202 



CHAPTER XVII 

SOME STRANGE FISH AND STRANGE 
FISHERMEN 

Decay of primitive methods— South American fisheries — The ara- 
paima — Harpoons and tethered arrows — The armado — Catching 
fish on land — The diodon— Fishing in Tierra del Fuego — African 
river-fishing — The Indian mango-fish — The modern Galilean fisher- 
man — South Sea Island fish — Proas and Hawaiian "outriggers" 
— Australian and Arctic fishing. 

EFORE quitting the subject of fish proper, we 
ought to take a glance at a few of those distant 
fisheries that cannot well be classed under any of 
the foregoing heads. Colonisation by Europeans has 
necessarily swept away many of the primitive methods 
and appliances with which the native fishermen of Poly- 
nesia, the East Indies, Africa, and America were wont to 
astonish the travellers of a bygone age ; but the fish are 
still there — many of them very curious and interesting — 
and some of the old ways of catching them still prevail. 
It is only among civilised or quasi-civilised nations that 
much deep-sea fishing is to be found. Work of that sort 
implies the use of strongly built vessels such as few savage 
races would have the means of constructing, as well as a 
far more profound knowledge of seamanship than could be 
expected among a barbarian people. Enlightened as the 



SOME STRANGE FISH 

ancient Egyptians were, even they had a horror of the 
sea, and usually confined their skill and energy in boat- 
building to making only such craft as would be used on 
the Nile. The American Indian who glides along the river, 
or fishes at his ease, in his frail birch canoe, regardless of 
deep water and alligators, is terrified at the sight of a 
heavy sea, and in many cases would not let himself be 
persuaded that fish can live amid such tempestuous sur- 
roundings. 

Still, there are exceptions. Up till quite a few years 
ago the coast Indians of Peru would accomplish long and 
dangerous sea voyages in their balzas, which were little 
better than pointed rafts with a lug-sail, bringing back a 
cargo of fish which they had caught with hook and line 
and dried in the sun. Many of the Polynesians have also 
proved themselves successful deep-sea fishers, while the 
natives of Madagascar and Malay, if they did not trouble 
about fishing themselves, had no objection to pursuing 
into deep water, and molesting, anyone else who did. 
Another exception must of course be made where the 
pearl-fishers of the East and West Indies are concerned. 

But those who neglect the greater depths have gener- 
ally very remunerative coast fisheries, and, not infre- 
quently, large rivers and lakes on which to expend their 
energies. In China, for instance, there are more river 
fishers than all the sea fishers in Europe and America 
together ; while the great rivers of South America and 
Africa make a fishing people of races that have never 
been Avithin hundreds of miles of the sea. 

In some of the South American rivers there is a fish — 

204 



AND STRANGE FISHERMEN 

the arapaima, a gigantic fresh-water herring — the hunting 
of which has been both a sport and an industry among 
the inhabitants of Brazil and Guiana for centuries. As 
the average weight of these monsters is about three 
hundredweight — some have been taken weighing four 
hundred pounds and measuring fifteen feet in length — it 
will be seen that arapaima hunting is not child's play. 
The catching is done by hook and line, by tethered arrows 
and by harpoons, angling being only employed for night 
work. The line, a sort of slender lasso, carries a heavily 
weighted hook baited with some small fish, and is lowered 
from a canoe which it is almost useless to moor, on account 
of the immense towing powers of the fish. If the angler 
is wise, as soon as the creature is pulled near enough, he 
puts an end to its struggles with a spear. 

Sundown or sunrise is the time for spearing. A boat 
pulled by half a dozen Indians or Zambos paddles gently 
up stream, everyone observing perfect silence, two or 
three fishermen crouching in the bow and watching keenly 
for a first sight of the largest fresh-water fish in the 
world. Suddenly a head splashes half above water and 
goes down again. Instantly one of the watchers snaps 
his fingers, at which the rowers rest on their paddles and 
every one waits breathlessly. The same thing happens 
again, the head, or perhaps just the nose of the fish 
appearing above the surface and vanishing again before 
aim can be taken. 

Presently a loud splash is heard some distance astern of 
the boat, as, with a clumsy imitation of its sea relative, 
the tarpon, the giant essays a half-spring out of the water. 

205 



SOME STRANGE FISH 

But the men take no further notice of him now ; they 
know that they have lost him in any case, for the fish are 
all travelling down stream. Judging, however, from the 
number of ripples ahead, he is no great loss, for there are 
plenty more like him to come. At last a broad silver 
belly rises a good five feet. Evidently this is a monster, 
for, some distance beyond, the water is being threshed into 
a tiny whirlpool by his great forked tail. Before the 
arapaima can sink again, a harpoon whirls through the air 
trailing behind it a long leathern cord, the other end of 
which is made fast to the boat. For an instant it seems 
as though boat and crew would be dragged under, as the 
fish gives one convulsive plunge ; but the spear was too 
well or too luckily aimed ; it has bedded itself in the 
upper part of the chest, and that sudden, jerking plunge 
was the arapaima's last movement ; all that remains to be 
done is to drag the dead body aboard. 

But there are times when the shot is not so opportune ; 
often the fish with three and even four harpoons bristling in 
its back or sides, will plunge, kick, and dodge, till there 
is every likelihood of the little vessel's capsizing, and 
leaving her crew at the mercy of the sleepy-looking 
alligators, that are innocently watching the sport from 
the muddy bank. 

The tethered arrow, formerly more commonly used than 
the harpoon in arapaima fishing, is almost identical with 
the Indian turtle-spear. The head is movable, being 
lightly fixed in a socket at the end of the shaft ; when 
the point strikes an object, the shaft is shaken free, 
though still in connection with the point by means of a 

206 



AND STRANGE FISHERMEN 

long coil of stout cord or thong which has been neatly 
wound round the arrow. The coil rapidly unrolls itself, 
leaving the shaft on the surface as a sort of float, and all 
the fishermen have to do is to paddle up and seize this ; 
then to draw the refractory giant to the top, as a further 
mark for their bows and arrows. 

When caught, the fish is either cut up into steaks and 
sold slightly salted, or is dried and packed for transport to 
the large towns, or for export. The flesh is said to be 
excellent. 

The South American rivers and pools have almost 
a monopoly of the curiosities among fresh-water fishes. 
In the Parana is another giant, called by the Gauchos the 
armado ; shorter though thicker than the arapaima, and 
much prized for its delicate flavour. The Gauchos angle 
for it with hand-lines, and hooks baited with cray-fish or 
meat. Two men in a canoe can work four lines — they 
could work forty if the craft were large enough to stand 
the strain ; the upper end of the line is tied to the boat, 
and the men stand straddle-legged to guard against 
sudden lunges. These do not always come ; often the fish 
swallows the hook, and lies on the bottom, scarcely moving, 
and only kicking when hauling-in time comes. 

Then how does the fisherman know when he has got a 
bite ? The armado sees to all that ; for, the moment he 
is hooked, he sets up a rattling, grating noise that can be 
clearly heard even when he is at the bottom, and, if near 
the surface, is audible from several yards away. And, 
moreover, he is not always content to lie in the mud and 
groan. He has a trick sdmetimes of seizing the line with 

207 



SOME STRANGE FISH 

the spine of his back or breast-fin, and either snapping it 
or doing his best to capsize the boat. So powerful are the 
fins, in fact, that he will seize the blade of a paddle with 
one of them and jerk it out of an unwary hand in an instant. 

Another member of his tribe (sihtridae), the largest 
fresh-water fish in Europe, is found in the Elbe and 
Danube, under various local names, measuring eight feet 
long and weighing about three hundredweight. 

Further varieties of the same family are also found 
in other South American rivers, the best known of which 
is called by zoologists the callkhthys ; it is covered from 
end to end with rows of small scaly plates, and on the 
head is a kind of bony helmet. Not only does it make a 
regular nest in the mud, wherein it deposits its eggs, but, 
if the stream or pool in which it lives dries up in the hot 
weather, it will make a considerable land journey to some 
other piece of water ; and it is on these journeys that it is 
generally lain in wait for and speared by the Indians. 
One more member of this genus, common in the Essequibo, 
the most highly prized of all as a table delicacy, is the 
" broad-mouth ,1 {platy stoma), the most beautifully marked 
of any ; the skin is a pale blue, and across the back are 
alternate stripes of black and white ; from their flat 
snouts and wide jaws, which they are in the habit of 
poking above the surface, they may easily be mistaken at 
first sight for alligators. 

Alligators, by the way, are not the only foes to river 
fishers here. In the streams of Paraguay are enormous 
water-serpents which have been known to upset a light 
canoe and drag one of the occupants under water. 

208 



AND STRANGE FISHERMEN 

British and Dutch residents in Guiana had at one time 
ample sport in fishing the Essequibo for the daxvalla, a 
scaleless fish, brilliantly marked with green, brown, and 
crimson, two and a half feet long, with a head like our 
jack ; but, as it has been hooked without mercy for the 
sake of its delicate flavour, to catch one nowadays is 
something for the sportsman to boast about. 

The coast fisheries of South America have, except in 
the far south, ceased to offer anything particularly strik- 
ing or unusual ; the seine, worked from the shore or from 
small boats, is the most commonly used net. In it are 
taken eels of various sorts, mackerel, a species of herring, 
and an occasional sun-fish, globe-fish, sea-porcupine, or 
diodon, as it is variously termed — the most innocent of 
creatures if left alone, and one of the most formidable to 
interfere with, for it will bite like any wolf, and the 
fishermen, though they are anxious enough to secure it, 
for it commands a good price as a curiosity, allow it to 
die in peace before attempting to carry it away. It is 
about two feet long, very bulky and flabby, and has the 
power of inflating itself till it is almost globular, when its 
whole surface is seen to be covered with short spines. In 
this blown-out condition it is incapable of swimming, but 
comes to the surface lying on its back, and allows itself 
to be carried along by the tide. Sometimes while in this 
position it will shoot a jet of water some considerable 
distance, at the same time making a curious grating 
noise with its mouth. Sometimes a misguided shark will 
elect to swallow a diodon, and in doing so inadvertently 
commits suicide ; for in nine cases out of ten the smaller 
o 209 



SOME STRANGE FISH 

fish " goes down " whole and living, and at once proceeds 
to bite a way out for itself through the stomach, ribs, and 
skin of the shark. 

Its under-skin secretes a beautiful red dye, which was 
once much prized by the Indians of Brazil. The fish is 
also found in the Indian and Pacific oceans. 

South American fishermen keep careful watch in the 
pools at low tide for the hideous octopus or cuttle-fish, 
which scarcely calls for a description, as everyone has 
seen it in pictures or aquaria. Sailors and novelists tell 
us horrible things about the misdeeds of the creature, 
though many naturalists regard it as more or less harm- 
less. To the fisherman it is rather a " find,' 1 both for the 
sake of the valuable black pigment which it secretes and 
also for its calcareous " shield," commonly known as the 
cuttle-fish bone, which is reduced to powder and used as a 
metal-burnisher. The small northern variety, called the 
flying-squid, which the cod-fishers use as bait, has the 
power of leaping to a height of fifteen or twenty feet 
above the water. 

The savages of Tierra del Fuego subsist almost entirely 
on fish, blubber, and seaweed. Here we must talk about 
fish-wives, for it is the women who do almost all the fish- 
ing, though the men sometimes paddle the canoes from 
vvhich much of the work is done. Generally speaking, 
the women catch fish while the men gather molluscs from 
the rocks, or drift about in their canoes on the chance of 
finding a dead whale or seal. The women's lines consist, 
as often as not, of lengths of their own hair braided and 
joined ; some few use a fish-bone hook, but most of them 



r 




AND STRANGE FISHERMEN 

none at all : the body of a good-sized shell-fish is tied to 
the end of the line, and the woman, sitting in her canoe, 
waits till some fish is choked by the bulky bait, and then 
draws up. When not engaged thus, these primitive fish- 
wives are occupied in diving for shell-fish and sea-eggs ; 
this they do without any such mechanical appliances as 
ropes or weights, springing into one or two-fathom water 
from the rocks just as we might dive from a boat or 
spring-board. £ome of the more energetic of the men 
practise fish-spearing, pulling out to a depth of a few 
fathoms, and "jabbing" at the fish as they appear, with a 
one-barbed spear ; but this is an operation which requires 
more judgment than the poor Fuegians possess, as any- 
one is aware who has ever aimed at even a stationary 
object that is under water. 

Passing on to the African continent, we see very much 
the same state of things as in America — sea-fisheries 
mainly under direct or indirect European influence, the 
natives attaching more importance to the rivers and 
lakes. In the Nile, fishing is carried on almost as it was 
in the days of the Pharaohs, by lines and dip-nets, the 
latter worked from the bank, and shaped something like a 
very long-handled shrimp push-net, or by groping in the 
mud as the waters recede after the floods. A very popu- 
lar fish that is taken in the latter way is the bichir, which 
is about eighteen inches long, and is covered with hard, 
bony scales. In the same manner the Arabs of the Upper 
Nile catch what they call the " thunder-fish," which aver- 
ages a foot in length and, like that of the Calabar River 
in the west, is endowed with considerable power of 

211 



SOME STRANGE FISH 

developing electricity. A large kind of barbel named the 
hbwy, also found in the mud, is greatly prized by the 
Nile dwellers, though to English palates it would be 
tasteless. 

In less civilised parts of the continent — on the Gambia 
River, for example — we find fish-spearing as mentioned 
above, as well as mud-searching. The West African 
Negroes are very fond of the " mud-eel," which, according 
to some naturalists, ought to be classed as a reptile on 
account of its foot-like fins. When the floods subside, 
thousands of these are left high and dry, and promptly 
bury themselves in the mud, which soon becomes hard 
and earthy, and here they would remain till the next 
inundation if the Negroes did not come along with wooden 
forks and dig them out. 

The inhabitants of the Congo Free State use fish-spears, 
as well as long metal hooks, which they hold in their 
hands. The people of Madagascar are more advanced, 
and have for centuries known the art of making hempen 
nets and barbed hooks. 

In the Indian Ocean is another curiosity called the 
" drum-fish," which the island fishermen of the Seychelles, 
Amirantes, etc. often take with hand-lines, and which is 
highly esteemed as an article of food ; it has earned its 
name from its habit of making a booming noise when 
pursuing or pursued ; in size and taste it is not unlike cod. 

The fisheries of India scarcely differ from those of 
China, the only deep-sea work done by the natives being 
practically confined to the pearl-oyster. But a river fish 
greatly sought after by native anglers is the tupsee or 

212 



AND STRANGE FISHERMEN 

batiahf known by Europeans as the mango-fish, from its 
yellowish colour. It is not unlike our perch, and always 
commands a high price, partly on account of its tooth- 
someness, but especially because its air-bladder yields 
isinglass. Several allied fish are found in the hotter parts 
of America and Africa. 

In the Ceylon rivers, too, we find the peasantry still 
clinging to the wading method, almost identical with that 
practised by the Chinese ; the fisherman finding his catch 
with his bare feet. 

The use of weirs or garths has been introduced into the 
Andaman Islands ; at Port Blair, the great convict 
settlement, the prisoners erect across the mouths of the 
creeks similar wooden traps to those mentioned in 
Chapter X ; they are not a fixture, but are periodically 
moved from creek to creek, because after a time the fish 
grow wary and avoid the spot where they have seen their 
friends disappear. The seir-fish, a kind of salmon, is 
caught in this way. Here deep-sea fishing is almost out 
of the question by reason of the strong current and heavy 
seas. 

We cannot leave the subject of Asiatic fisheries without 
a word or two about that carried on in the Holy Land. 
The modern Palestine traveller tells us that we should 
now look in vain for boats " launching out into the 
deep," and working nets all night in the Sea of Galilee. 
Not that the fish have disappeared; they are to be caught 
there in millions, as also in the Jordan and the Jabbock ; 
but the Arabs, less accustomed to systematic work than 
the Jews of old, follow easier plans — the simplest and 

213 



SOME STRANGE FISH 

most disgusting of which is throwing poisoned bits of 
meal-cake into the water, and then wading in to make a 
collection ; " a custom which sure no other nation is like 
to rob them of ! " 

Another way of going to work is by pelting the fish 
with stones, which can be done very profitably where the 
shoals of yellow musht congregate. Some of the Bedawin, 
probably taking example by travellers, fire charges of 
small shot among them, and so get a bag ; so thick are 
these shoals that it is even said that a revolver bullet has 
been known to kill three fish. Hook and line may be 
found very occasionally, but, as a rule, where the practices 
mentioned above are not resorted to, the fishing is done 
by small dip-nets or large hand-nets ; in the former case, 
the fishers, standing on the rocks, lower a kind of bird-net 
which can be closed by the pulling of a rope, from rocks 
or wooden platforms, and haul up at intervals of an hour 
or so. Where the hand-net is in use — it is a kind of 
cross between a butterfly- and shrimp-net — the fisherman 
vades in up to his waist with a bag on his shoulder, and 
is content to catch the fish one or two at a time. The 
fish of the Syrian waters are of many different species, but 
few are peculiar to the country. 

Going farther afield to the more distant islands — and 
probably meeting en route the sea-serpent, which is one of 
the ribbon-fish tribe frequenting very deep water and 
measuring from fifteen feet — we come across other flying- 
fish than those mentioned in an earlier chapter. The 
flying gurnard, for instance, which, in addition to possess- 
ing the power to take long leaps, can support itself in 

214 



\ - 







A Spider's Wee as a Fishing-Net : A Strange 
New Guinea Device 

A very huge and strong spider's web, common to New 
Guinea, is used by the natives as a fishing-net. They set up 
in the forest a bamboo, bent as in the picture, and leave it 
until the spiders have covered it with a web in the manner 
shown. 



AND STKANGE FISHERMEN 

mid-air for a minute or so by means of its long breast- 
fins. This the inhabitants of the South Seas shoot with 
arrows and eat. Another delicacy among these islanders 
is the palolo, a slender marine animal three inches long, 
whose body is divided into joints, each of which is supplied 
with a pair of gills ; the natives gather these in great 
numbers from the coral reefs, and bake them wrapped in 
the leaves of the bread-fruit tree. 

One of the most extraordinary nets to be found in the 
whole world is that used on the New Guinea coast ; a net 
of Nature's own providing. A local spider is in the habit 
of weaving a web about six feet in diameter, the meshes 
of which are so tough that they will not only resist con- 
siderable water-pressure, but will easily stand the weight 
of a one-pound fish. The canny natives cut long bamboo 
poles, bend the ends into a loop, and leave them all day in 
the forest where the spiders are most plentiful ; when they 
return they find that the industrious creature has con- 
verted each bamboo into a sort of gigantic tennis-racquet 
or lacrosse-bat, and with this the fisherman retires to the 
nearest stream or back-water and whips out the fish singly 
as they rise. 

The Sandwich islanders and the people of the Ladrones 
are exceptional as savage fishermen, having no fear of 
fairly deep water. The latter think nothing of going 
fishing in thirteen fathoms in canoes which British fisher- 
men would laugh or shudder at ; light-built proas, but 
rigged with one sail, in the construction of which their 
ancestors most likely copied the Malay pirates. The boat 
which the Hawaiians use for fishing and porpoise-hunt- 

215 



SOME STRANGE FISH 

ing is very long and very narrow, pointed, and curved 
upwards at either end, and capable of holding five or 
six men. By an ingenious system of " outrigger " the 
terrific surf is rendered almost powerless to upset this 
craft ; for standing out from one side of the boat are two 
light poles, across the ends of which is lashed a beam 
similar in shape and length to the boat's keel, so that at a 
distance, you might think you saw two boats fixed parallel 
to each other. The outrigger forms a stay to the boat 
on the side whereon it is fixed, and the other side is 
equally supported because only a very great strain could 
possibly weigh up such a contrivance. The paddling is done 
from the stern, and fishing begins as soon as the little 
vessel is clear of the reefs ; and in a very few hours she has 
as many fish as she can hold. The catch is taken ashore 
alive in pots and skin buckets, and disposed of at the 
public market, many of the islanders consuming it not 
only uncooked but still living. 

The Australian fisheries have developed remarkably 
during the last half-century, apart even from the whaling 
and pearl-fishing, huge fleets being engaged in turtle-, 
dugong- and oyster-fishing ; more than a hundred species 
of edible fish are trawled for off the coast of New South 
Wales alone. The few remaining coast aborigines live on 
the coarse-fleshed sting-rays which are thrown up living 
and dead by the tide ; and on such other fish as they can 
catch on the barbed bone points of their spears. The 
Kanakas of the Melanesian Islands are skilful in the 
building of canoes, but, as with the Fuegians, the women 
do the fishing, while the men eat each other. 

216 




Eskimos Spearing Fish 



They wait patiently at a hole in the ice until a fish comes near the surface, 
and then strike. 



AND STRANGE FISHERMEN 

It is necessary to add a few lines concerning other 
Arctic fisheries than those which we shall presently touch 
upon. There is not much to be said. The Eskimos would 
be willing enough to catch the fish, but there are so few 
to be caught ; the coitus, a spiny-headed creature which 
British fishermen call the " Father Lasher, 11 with a small 
kind of cod, the Arctic shark, the salmon, and the my sis 
or opossum-shrimp, are almost the only fish that will 
venture so far north. In , winter time the Eskimo makes 
a hole in the ice when possible and, with his bone-headed 
spear or barbed fork, patiently sticks such fish as come 
near the surface ; in summer he goes in his canoe or kayak 
— which he has cleverly made from what odd bits of wood 
he can scrape together, and covered with skin — and, with 
a line made of sinew and a fish-bone hook, angles for 
whatever he may be lucky enough to catch. 



'.17 



CHAPTER XVIII 
PEARLS AND PEARL-DIVING 

How pearls grow — Loose and fixed pearls — The fish that contain 
them — The Ceylon Banks — Native divers — The pearl fleet — Scene 
in the Gulf of Manaar — A noisy crew — The " shifts " — Method of 
lowering — Sharks — A curious superstition —Landing and piling the 
oysters — How they open — Varieties of pearls — Other grounds — 
Dredging for pearl-shells—The argentine. 

WHAT is pearl ? Put briefly, it is the result of 
layer upon layer of carbonate of lime being 
wrapped round a tiny nucleus that lies hidden 
within some shell-bearing mollusc. 

Most shell-fish are provided with a secretion wherewith 
to line their homes, making the otherwise harsh shell a 
smooth and comfortable refuge for the tender body that 
lies within it ; and this secretion, which, in its hardened 
form, we know as nacre or mother-of-pearl, is spread by 
the fish in very thin translucent films, the outer one of 
which consequently acquires an opaline or iridescent sur- 
face. When the shell is thus lined, its tenant has still 
good store of the secretion left, and this it devotes to 
covering any small particle that has no business within 
the valves ; for shell-fish, though their nervous system be, 
in most respects, very elementary, are exceedingly sen- 
sitive to tickling or scratching. 

218 



PEARLS AND PEARL-DIVING 

A grain of sand will sometimes work its way between 
the body and one of the valves, thereby causing an 
irritation which the mollusc at once proceeds to check 
by gradually covering the intruder with carbonate of 
lime films, one upon another like the coats of an onion, 
till it is as smooth and polished as the inside of the shell 
itself. Again, when a dog-whelk or other boring animal 
that preys on oysters has succeeded in drilling a hole 
through the shell from the outside, the little creature 
within will sometimes plug up the aperture with its 
secretion and laboriously spread layers over the nucleus 
thus formed. The result in either of these cases is that 
a pearl will be found adhering to one of the shells. 

The more valuable pearls, however, are found loose 
inside the mantle of the mollusc, or at least slightly 
connected with it ; and these have a somewhat different 
origin. It often happens that one of the ova is lifeless, 
and, not being thrown out with the rest at spawning 
time, gradually increases in size, because, though infertile, 
it is still supplied with blood-vessels from the parent 
body ; then hardens and becomes an even greater source 
of irritation than any foreign object would be — till it has 
been " insulated " with nacre and made a pearl of. These 
will be the globular and pear-shaped pearls — pear-shaped, 
because at times the connecting link or pedicle between 
the egg and the body is also covered with the films. One 
of the latter sort has been taken weighing 3|oz. troy, 
2 in. long and 4 in circumference. I believe it is still to 
be seen at the South Kensington Museum. 

Any shell-bearing mollusc may contain pearls, though 

219 



PEARLS AND PEARL-DIVING 

they are most often found in certain species of oysters. 
Very fine ones have been discovered in the ordinary 
British fresh-water mussel, notably from the Welsh and 
Scotch rivers ; the best known of these being one that 
was found at Conway in the seventeenth century and 
presented by the Lord of the Manor to Catherine of 
Braganza, wife of Charles II ; it is still preserved among 
the Crown jewels. The sea mussels found at the mouth 
of the Conway are still crushed for the sake of any pearls 
they may contain. 

About a year ago a large spherical pearl was taken 
from a Whitstable oyster ; and pearl-bearers, both mussel 
and oyster, are so continually found off the coast of 
Scotland that a local fishery has more than once been 
seriously mooted even in our own time. In the seven- 
teenth and eighteenth centuries such an industry was 
carried on there, over a hundred thousand pounds 1 worth 
of pearls being shipped to France between the years 
1760 and 1800 alone. The Chinese oyster, too, often 
contains a very small pearl. 

In a general way, however, we can only expect to find 
the genuine article in really warm seas and at a consider- 
able distance from the shore, as in the case of Ceylon, the 
East and West Indies, Central America, and the Persian 
Gulf. The pearl-oyster proper (Meleagrina margaritiferus) 
has a shell that is almost semicircular and of a greenish 
colour outside, the inside being lined throughout with an 
unusually thick and hard nacreous coat ; the two valves 
are joined together by a very long straight hinge. Such 
fish are found either singly or in huge clusters, clinging 



PEARLS AND PEARL-DIVING 

to rocks that are covered with seventy feet and more of 
water; or lying huddled together on "banks" such as 
the celebrated ones in the Gulf of Manaar on the west 
coast of Ceylon. 

It is often asked why pearl-oysters are not dredged for, 
like others. In Australia and elsewhere the fishermen 
have tried this method, and there is no special reason why 
it might not become universal, beyond the fact that the 
depth (nine to thirteen fathoms) is somewhat against it. 
There is this to be said, also ; three divers working for 
ten hours can bring up three or four thousand oysters 
between them ; while, working with dredges, by the time 
they had sorted the desirable from the undesirable, they 
would not have caught much more than half that num- 
ber; further — the fisherman, whether Asiatic or European, 
will do as his fathers did. 

Pearl-divers — Hindoos, Sinhalese, Coolies, Negroes, and 
Arabs — have been trained to their work from childhood ; 
trained to hold their breath under water, to stand the 
pressure that must be expected in such a depth, and to 
gather a bag-full of oysters in rather less than a minute. 
Partly to realise what that pressure means, you have only 
to lie at the bottom of a six-foot swimming bath while 
you count sixty, and then reflect that a pearl-diver stays 
the same length of time, and more, under twelve or 
thirteen times that depth, busily working with his hands 
the whole while. 

Short as the Ceylon pearl season is — it lasts but from 
the middle of March to the end of April — the divers, as 
they are now paid, can earn enough ^during that time, if 

221 



PEARLS AND PEARL-DIVING 

they are lucky, to satisfy their humble wants for the 
remainder of the year. Some employers have a fixed rate 
of payment ; others go on the profit-sharing principle, 
each boat taking a fourth of the proceeds of its catch, 
and the divers sharing that amount equally. 

Long before daylight the boats, hundreds of them, put 
out, each of them rigged with a gigantic sort of lug-sail 
and carrying a crew of from five-and-twenty to sixty, 
including ten or more divers. Navigation in these waters 
is a tolerably simple matter. There are no tides to speak 
of, and the powerful coast currents which to a stranger 
might be dangerous are known, every inch of them, 
to the Sinhalese. 

Unfortunately for those interested in the pearl-fisheries, 
this happy condition of the sea only exists from the last 
week of February till the second of April, possibly the 
end of April. By that time the hot season is over, and 
the island, lying as it does in the course of the two 
monsoons (the south-west till September and then the 
north-east till January and February), is henceforth 
subject to heavy seas such as no diver could descend in. 
Hence the six weeks 1 season. 

On reaching the banks a, signal-gun is fired and then 
soundings are taken, though many of the fishermen know 
the ground so well that this may often be a superfluous 
measure ; still, as within the same half square mile, depths 
of five and of a hundred fathoms can exist here, the 
precaution is not to be wondered at. 

By daylight, the whole scene on the pearl ground is the 
very antipodes of what is to be witnessed among a British 

222 



PEARLS AND PEARL-DIVING 

fishing fleet. For the most part the sea is dead calm and 
oily-looking ; the sky is a brilliant, cloudless blue, and 
the sun is already scorching the naked shoulders of the 
fishermen, for the boat has cast anchor at but nine degrees 
above the equator. Instead of the muttered word or two 
and the silent obedience to orders that would characterise 
an English or American crew, there is a frantic babble 
of tongues, often in four_ different languages ; violent 
gesticulating, arguing, and squabbling, and an occasional 
free fight, till we might well wonder how these men ever 
get through any work at all. But the overseer, some- 
times a Portuguese or an Englishman, restores order at 
last, and the first " shift 11 of divers bestir themselves and 
make ready for the task. Where ten divers go to a boat, 
they work in shifts of five, turn and turn about. 

When once the ropes are run over the blocks or the 
gunwale, all signs of laziness disappear ; the shouting and 
bustle certainly do not diminish, on the contrary, they are 
part of the business, as will presently appear, and they 
rather increase three-fold. Everyone now seems to move 
as if fixed on springs, and so swiftly is the work carried out 
that it is not until you have watched half a dozen descents 
that you realise what is being done. The shift of divers 
stand in a row along one side of the boat and beside 
each of them is a sort of projection something like a 
ship's davit, with a block at the end of it, through which 
the rope will be hauled. From it depends a short length 
of the rope, to the end of which is fastened a large, 
smooth stone weighing about forty pounds. Some boats 
dispense with the davit-like contrivance, in which case the 

223 



PEARLS AND PEARL-DIVING 

rope is hauled over the gunwale like the tow-line of a net. 
Others have merely a high horizontal rail over which the 
rope is hauled. 

On the upper side of the stone a loop like a stirrup is 
left in the rope, large enough to hold the naked foot of 
the diver, so that you may say he stands on the stone with 
one foot and maintains his perpendicular by clinging with 
one hand to the lowering line. At a signal from the first 
diver, his rope is let go and, weighted by the stone, he 
sinks rapidly, the line-holders continuing to pay out rope 
till the sudden slacking announces that the bottom is 
reached. Instantly one of the crew springs to the gun- 
wale and hauls back till the line is taut again, and then, 
still keeping his hand on it, waits for the jerk that may 
come at any moment from below, giving the signal to 
draw up. 

On many boats the divers work in pairs, one lowering 
and hauling the other once or twice and then changing 
about. If we could follow one of these black bodies to 
its destination we should see the diver tearing off" the 
oysters in bundles from the rocks or shingle- bank, almost 
squatting on his hams, or hanging to a reef by his toes, 
one arm hooked round the rope while, with the disengaged 
hand, he swiftly packs his shells into the net bag that 
hano-s over his shoulder. At last he can stand the strain 
no longer ; he pulls the rope and is hoisted up as fast as 
the windlass handles can be turned, or, if the boat should 
not possess such a contrivance, as fast as one or two men, 
hauling hand over hand, can pull in the warp. When he 
rises above water there are hands ready to help him into 

224 



PEARLS AND PEARL-DIVING 

the boat, often a very necessary measure on account of the 
strain he has undergone. 

As to the length of time that an " undressed " diver 
can remain under water, there is remarkable divergence; 
the shape of the man's chest and shoulders and the condi- 
tion of his heart and lungs are the things that decide that 
matter, together, of course, with the amount of pressure 
to be sustained. Eighty seconds would perhaps be a 
reasonable average, though Mediterranean sponge divers 
have been known to stay down three and a half 
minutes. 

But does not a sensible diver keep one eye on the 
oysters and the other on the sharks ? it may well be asked. 
Possibly ; but some of them are constitutionally unable to 
keep their eyes open at all, relying instead on their sense 
of touch ; their lids drop when they enter the water, and 
cannot be raised until the diver comes up again, as many 
swimmers are aware from their own experience. 

As to the sharks which, more's the pity, certainly do 
abound in the Gulf of Manaar, it is but rarely that they 
pursue, let alone attack, a pearl-diver, and we may regard 
ninety-nine per cent of the ghastly tales about these 
monsters as fables. Sir E. Tennent, who may be taken 
as an authority on all matters relating to Ceylon, writing 
over forty years ago, says that not more than one well- 
authenticated instance of a pearl-fisher's meeting his 
death in this manner could be quoted within a space of 
fifty years. In the first place the shark has almost in- 
variably a dread of human beings and, at any time, may 
be scared away by sustained noise. The presence of such 
p 225 



PEARLS AND PEARL-DIVING 

a number of boats and the splash of the stone weights 
are enough to frighten him away from the scene ; indeed, 
the shouting and bustle of the crews is to be regarded 
largely as a special entertainment got up by the Sinhalese 
with the avowed intention of keeping him at a safe dis- 
tance. The dark skins of the divers, too, are generally 
believed to constitute in themselves a sort of scare-shark, 
so much so that the Arabs and the more light-skinned of 
the Ceylonese are in the habit of smearing their bodies 
with a semi-permanent black dye. A few of them take a 
further precaution, though they themselves would admit 
that in most cases it is a needless one ; carry in their 
girdles two or three short spikes made of iron-wood which, 
if need arise, they are prepared to poke into the eyes of 
the monster. 

One rather interesting superstition still lingers among 
a few of the older divers in connection with the 
shark. I mean the resorting at the beginning of 
the season to the hereditary shark-charmer, a being 
who is endowed, they maintain, with power to exor- 
cise the voracious creature, and turn him back from 
any person thus charmed ; the ceremony connected with 
the exorcism is a very ancient one, presumably rather 
magical than religious. By some of the natives an 
annual visit to this personage is thought insufficient, so it 
occasionally happens that a boat's crew will not sail unless 
the charmer or some individual deputed by him accom- 
panies them to the pearl ground. 

If not too exhausted by his efforts, the diver on coming 
to the surface will merely hand in his catch and hang for 

226 



TEARLS AND PEARL-DIVING 

a minute to the boat's side while he takes breath and then go 
down again ; but, after a few such descents, he will be very 
willing to be lifted aboard and let another man take his 
place. Working thus alternately, diving scarcely stops 
for an instant till the midday signal gun is fired, or till 
the boat is full, when she at once makes for the shore as 
fast as she can, anxious to be as near first in the field as 
possible in order to get a good price for her cargo. Some- 
times a boatload means as many as from twenty to forty 
thousand fish, and these, packed in baskets or sacks, are 
taken ashore, after having been sealed by an emissary 
from a watch-boat, and carried to a large enclosure some 
distance up the beach, checked, packed in heaps of a 
thousand, and promptly offered for sale by the auctioneers. 
Buyers from all the ends of the earth, and of all classes, 
are waiting to bid, and each boatload is gradually dis- 
posed of. 

Thus heaped up out of their natural element, the fish 
are dead in a couple of hours, and then the heat of the 
sun begins the work of putrefying them. The smell — 
but let us change the subject. Artificial means of opening 
the oysters have been tried frequently in different parts 
of the world, as, for instance, in South and Central 
America by the sixteenth-century Spaniards, who were 
wont to force the valves by exposure to a fierce fire ; but 
such methods have generally resulted in serious damage to 
the contents by discoloration and breakage. In Ceylon 
also, impatient buyers, imitating the example of the 
auctioneers, who are forced to open a few on the spot as 
samples of what the heap for sale is likely to contain, 

227 



PEARLS AND PEARL-DIVING 

will wrench open the valves with their knives. In the 
hands of an experienced man this is a risky operation, 
and when performed by a neophyte it is largely a case of 
fools stepping in where dredgers fear to tread. How many 
laymen can open a " common or garden "" oyster for eating 
without cutting a hole in their hands, and hacking the 
fish into a nasty, dirty mess ? 

When the few days of putrefaction have done their 
work, "washing" begins, an occupation which calls for 
consummate care and patience — and plugged nostrils. 
Taking the shells a couple of hundred at a time, the 
washers throw them into a tub of water, keeping careful 
look-out as they do so for the loose pearls — the most 
valuable of any — which have a tendency to roll away and 
get lost. More often than not these lie near the mouth 
of the shell ; but they may also be concealed within the 
body, or near the hinge. The fish, of course, sink, while 
the dust, mites, and other dross rise to the surface. The 
dirty water is gently poured off and replaced by fresh, 
and so on till nothing remains but shells, rotten oysters, 
and possible pearls. 

Next, the shells are handed out and closely examined. 
Strangely enough, those pearls found adhering to the 
upper or rounded valve are generally pronounced worth- 
less, though, naturally, there are exceptions ; those on the 
flat valve are nipped off with delicate tools, and finally 
the empty shells are set aside for the value of the nacre 
lining. 

Then the malodorous mass that is left in the tub has to 
be felt and examined inch by inch ; work that can only be 

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PEARLS AND PEARL-DIVING 

done by people endowed with delicacy of touch. The 
men engaged in this are watched as closely as diamond- 
field negroes. Many employers will not even allow them 
to remove their hands from the tub except to give up 
a "find.'" When every perceptible pearl has been ex- 
tracted, the putrid fish is laid out to dry, and then sorted 
all over again for the sake of any treasures that may 
have been allowed to pass unnoticed. 

The sorting or sifting of the pearls is the next pro- 
cess ; and this is done by means of a large brass colander. 
The pear-shaped and the larger spherical pearls are set 
aside for subsequent drilling, the smaller sifted and re- 
sifted and classed according to their size ; the smallest of 
all are packed away for export to China, where a far 
greater trade in "seed-pearls" is done than the local 
fisheries can possibly keep supplied. Among other ways 
of utilising them, the Chinese physicians calcine them and 
employ them in their medicines. 

The Ceylon pearl-fisheries are probably the least 
reliable of any, and one year's returns are in no way 
a guarantee for those of another. This, no doubt, is 
largely accounted for by the fact that the varying depths 
make only a great number of small oyster-beds instead of a 
few large ones ; so that, even without taking into account 
the cod and other ground-fish that feast on shell and 
oyster whenever occasion arises, the number of " brood " 
must necessarily fluctuate when at any time the spat as it 
is cast is liable to float away to depths beyond reach 
of even a " dressed 11 diver. 

On the other hand, the Arabian fisheries, that are 

229 



PEARLS AND PEARL-DIVING 

carried on near the coast of the island of Bahrein in the 
Persian Gulf, seem to vary very little from one year 
to another, their average annual worth being reckoned at 
about three hundred thousand pounds. 

Those of Western Australia, too, are proving both 
regular and remunerative. The native Polynesian divers 
who are employed often prefer to go down unweighted, 
first smearing their bodies with grease. Among these 
folk the women are unquestionably the better divers. 

Some allusion should be made here to a comparatively 
new industry — pearl-shell fishing, which is greatly on the 
increase owing to the manufacture of artificial pearls and 
to the steady demand for mother-of-pearl. Nearly all 
round the coast of Australia as well as in the Dutch East 
Indies, mussels, oysters, and kindred fish are continually 
being dived or dredged for, solely for the sake of the 
nacre which they contain. West Australia alone sends 
away about a hundred thousand pounds 1 worth of such 
shells every year — just four times the value of that 
colony's pearl-fisheries. At this work also, the Polynesian 
divers are in great request. 

Apropos of artificial pearls, there is a considerable in- 
dustry among the Mediterranean fishermen in netting 
the argentine, a very brilliant, silver-coloured fish of the 
salmon order. When caught it is opened, and its sound 
or air-bladder removed and specially treated for the sake 
of the coat of nacre with which that part of its anatomy 
is covered. 



230 



CHAPTER XIX 
WHALES AND WHALING 

A profitable if risky industry — One or two historical details — The 
home of the whale — Old and new methods of catching him — 
Harpoons — " Blowing " — The whale's trail — Throwing the harpoon 
— A nerve-destroying trade — The tow-line — Other shots at the 
monster — A cut at the tail — The death — Cutting up — The whale's 
enemies — Rorquals and cachalots — A modern whaler and its 
equipment — The harpoon-gun and the bomb-lance — A disappoint- 
ing whale — Various uses to which the carcass is devoted — Sperm 
oil and ambergris, 

THE Cetacea, the order to which the whale, as well 
as the porpoise and the dolphin belong, are marine 
mammals, more or less fish-like in form, warm- 
blooded, breathing by means of lungs, and inhaling air 
while on the surface of the water. You may seek 
throughout the animal kingdom and not find a creature 
more valuable after it is dead ; not an ounce of it need 
be — or, nowadays, is — wasted ; blood, bones, skin, en- 
trails, all are of some use ; and the man who gave two 
hundred pounds for a carcass might look to make cent 
per cent profit on his investment. 

The body is more or less spindle-shaped, ending in a 
tail which, unlike that of the fish, is transversal or hori- 
zontal. It is this member that is mainly instrumental 
in moving the enormous body, for its flippers are rela- 

231 



WHALES AND WHALING 

tively weak and are used principally to balance its move- 
ments. The nostrils are usually placed on the upper 
part of the head, by which arrangement the whale can 
breathe without raising the head far above water ; the 
skin is hairless. Whales proper are generally classified 
as toothless and toothed ; the first group including the 
Rorqual and the Arctic or Right whale ; the second the 
Cachalot or Sperm whale. 

The whale-fishery dates back to very ancient times. 
The tales of whaling, as prosecuted by the early American 
Indians, are not perhaps to be taken seriously ; the tale, 
for instance, of the intelligent Florida savages, who were 
wont to spring on the back of the creature, plug up one 
of his nostrils with a wooden peg, go down to the bottom 
with him and up again ; hammer another plug into the 
second nostril and then leave him to suffocate. But of 
the antiquity of harpooning there can be no doubt. It 
is said of Leviathian, in the Book of Job, " Canst thou 
fill his skin with barbed irons, or his head with fish- 
spears ? " 

And there is certainly no room for doubt as to the 
ancient Eskimo method, for many of these strange little 
people still follow the plan with which they are credited 
in very early chronicles of travel. A flotilla of kayaks 
surrounds one of these monsters, and the hunters throw 
harpoons, to which huge bladders made of sealskin are 
attached. With a few of such spears sticking into it, the 
poor whale cannot possibly dive (or "sound"), for he 
is very effectually buoyed to the surface by the bladders, 
and the Eskimos can slaughter him at their leisure. 

232 



WHALES AND WHALING 

Otherus, a ninth-century German navigator, saw more 
than two hundred whales taken in two days by Biscayan 
fishermen in the White Sea ; in fact, the Biscayans had 
practically the whole of the whaling industry in their 
hands up till the seventeenth century ; for most nations 
(the Japanese and the Eskimos excepted) regarded the 
pursuit of the monster rather as a sport than as a 
business. 

The Spaniards and the Dutch forcibly took the trade 
away from the Biscayans, who fell into the secondary 
position of guides and teachers, and even English mariners 
were glad to learn of them. In the seventeenth century 
the Dutch applied their proverbial business capacity to 
the work ; pursued the whales to Spitzbergen, and founded 
the village of Smeerenbourg (" Grease Town "") on 
Amsterdam Island ; and, when the animals were gradually 
chased from that neighbourhood, instituted the Green- 
land fishery. 

For a long while the British met with but poor success 
at the business ; but, in 1732, Government offered large 
subsidies (which were doubled in 1749), and so, bit by 
bit, England and her colonies rose to the front rank as 
whalers. 

Up to the earlier part of the nineteenth century, a 
favourite ground for the fishery was round about Disko 
Island ; but now many of the Arctic whales have sought 
refuge still further north in Baffin Bay, etc. In the 
eighteenth century, explorers from the United States 
resolved to try whaling off the Falkland Islands and 
Patagonia, and pushed their researches to the Antarctic 

233 



WHALES AND WHALING 

regions ; and now America and England rely largely on 
the produce of these fishing grounds. But it is not 
necessarily the cold latitudes in which we must look for 
whaling; the African, Australian, and New Zealand 
coasts ; Japan, Corea, and Norway offer ample scope ; for 
the whale will go wherever he can find food, whether 
the latter be the molluscs of the French and Scotch 
coasts, or the opossum shrimps of the Arctic regions. 
When a whale is thrown ashore or caught near the coast 
in the British Isles, it is, like the sturgeon, a Fish Royal, 
the head being the property of the king, and the tail, 
of the queen. 

Steam and gunpowder have robbed whaling of its 
sporting and romantic features to a very great extent, 
but not altogether ; you cannot go into deep water, what- 
ever may be your boat and equipment, in pursuit of a 
giant considerably longer than a cricket-pitch, that may 
elect to smash all the small boats — and some of the large 
ones — within reach of his ponderous tail, without feeling 
a little bit like a mighty hunter. The Norwegian and 
American fishermen laugh at the notion of harpooning 
a whale in the old-fashioned style ; and use only the 
harpoon-gun — which we shall presently consider. But 
first let us watch the traditional method, which we can 
do very well from a Dutch or Shetland whaler. 

The ship will probably be a three-master, with fore- 
and main-mast square-rigged, having a crew of five-and- 
thirty ; and with her will be half a dozen four or five- 
oared boats. When a likely ground is reached a look- 
out man is posted aloft, and, at his signal, the small 

234 



WHALES AND WHALING 

boats are lowered. At the helm of each boat is an old 
hand with whom most of the responsibility rests ; in the 
bows is the harpooner, waiting to throw as soon as the 
word of command is given. 

The harpoon calls for some description. It is about 
three and a half feet long and has two parts — the iron, 
and the handle or shank, which carries a quarter of a mile 
of rope. The iron tapers, from the shank to the neck 
above the barbs, then spreads out into a broad-barbed 
spear-head, the outer edges of which are very keen, while 
the shoulders are thick and blunt ; so that when once the 
barbs are fleshed there is no pulling them out. 

Suddenly the coxswain sees a sort of broad whirlpool 
or eddy spreading near the boat, and, at the same time, 
there is a rumbling and an upheaving in the same 
vicinity ; then a black muzzle and blow-holes appear on 
the surface ; the whale has come up to breathe. Then up 
shoots a double column of vapour from the blow-holes, 
each column curving outwards and rising several yards in 
the air; then the head and tail — perhaps the whole 
body — become visible, only to sink again before a harpoon 
could possibly be made to reach him. The whale does 
not do things on a small scale ; when he breathes he 
makes himself heard several hundred yards away, and, if 
he is agitated, the sound is audible for a mile or two. 
The " columns " are composed of the warm air from the 
lungs of the animal, mingled with some amount of watery 
vapour and particles of fatty matter, hence they are only 
visible when the surrounding temperature is low, just as 
we can only " see our own breath " on a cold day. The 

235 



WHALES AND WHALING 

vapour quickly dissolves, but the greasy particles are left 
lying on the surface of the water, and so afford an indis- 
putable "trail," which the whalers are not slow to take 
advantage of. 

The coxswain has carefully noted the angle at which 
the creature^ tail was inclined, for that is an indication 
of the direction it will have followed ; also the quantity 
of the grease spots, from which he will be able to tell 
whether the whale has taken a long or a short breath, for 
upon this depends the length of time it will remain under 
water, and according to his deductions he gives his com- 
mands to the crew. 

Presently comes a repetition of the rumbling and eddy- 
ing ; the helmsman has not been far out in his reckoning ; 
the whale is coming to the surface only thirty yards away 
from his boat ; the other crews see it and start rowing 
with all their strength. But the coxswain of the nearest 
boat takes things gently; certainly he wants to get within 
half a dozen yards of the whale, but he does not want his 
boat to come in contact with the animal's tail, or to get 
a knock with a huge flipper that will swamp her or 
smash her to splinters. 

Holding his spear with both hands, and supporting 
himself against the curves of the bow, the harpooner 
awaits the signal. 

" Let go ! " or " Strike ! " shouts the cox suddenly, and 
all the men hold their breath in their excitement and 
suspense, for so much depends on the shot. If the harpoon 
should be thrown awkwardly or with insufficient force, it 
may merely prick the skin, and fall out again by its own 

236 




Harpooning a Sperm Whale 

As the coxswain shouts, the harpoon whizzes through the air, and the barbs, cleaving 
their way through skin and blubber, fix themselves in one of the hard elastic muscles 
of the whale. 



WHALES AND WHALING 

weight ; or, having taken up a temporary position half in 
and half out of the flesh, it may easily be expelled by 
a special muscular action on the part of the whale. In 
either of these cases the loss that would be sustained by 
the crews is incalculable, for the wounded creature, 
having escaped, will gather together its friends and its 
neighbours, and the whole " school "" will dash away out 
of further reach. Judge, then, whether the harpooner 
should not be a man of unshakable nerve. Yet some 
are not ; some turn livid and tremulous the moment the 
harpoon has left their hands, and, if the shot should fail, 
probably could not make a second, even if the lives of the 
crew depended on it. Seasoned whalers will tell you that 
the work is more nerve-destroying than all the other 
fisheries put together. The risk is so awful, death so 
certain, if a false step be made ; the stake at issue such a 
huge one (for so great are the rewards that a poor man 
may become rich in no time), that everything combines to 
make whaling infinitely worse than pearl-diving, and as bad 
as the gambling-tables, as far as nerves are concerned. 

As the cox shouts, the heavy dart whistles across the 
few yards of space, and the barbs cleave their way 
through skin and blubber and tissue, fixing themselves in 
the fibres of one of the tough elastic muscles which close 
over them with a spring, and from which they can never 
be torn while the animal remains alive. 

" Good shot ; look out for the line ! " says the man at 
the helm. 

The harpooned whale has this in common with the 
hooked salmon — you never know what he will do next. 

237 



WHALES AND WHALING 

It goes without saying that a great deal depends on where 
he is hit ; if a motor nerve or important muscle is badly 
injured he may try to make a hurried escape, and yet be 
deterred from doing so by the pain which his first instinc- 
tive motion causes. Thus there may be time for a second 
harpoon, either from the same man or the cox, or even 
from another boat ; for, badly hurt or not, the animal 
generally hesitates for a few moments before deciding on 
a course of action. 

Suddenly it plunges under — keep clear of the rope if 
you value your life. A trawl tow-warp is bad enough to 
get entangled in ; but if you should be caught in the coil 
of a harpoon-line you are in for a journey of a couple of 
hundred yards or more — in the direction of the bottom. 
The line, which is probably coiled in a couple of tubs, 
runs out at terrific speed till you begin to think that this 
part of the sea is bottomless. But after a time the rate 
is reduced till the coil scarcely seems to move ; the rope 
hangs slack, and so far perpendicular that you find your- 
self wondering whether the whale intends coming up im- 
mediately under you. Another move of the line ; no 
more runs out, but the part that hangs over the bow is 
taking a horizontal direction, and, a hundred yards or so 
to leeward, a similar whirlpool to that which you noticed 
before is forming ; a bluish patch rises above water and 
moves forward at a moderate pace till the line is taut 
again ; the whale has come to the top, still conscious that 
something is sticking into it and cannot be got rid of, but 
not yet prepared to find a boat-load of men hitched to 
that something. 

238 



WHALES AND WHALING 

Meanwhile other boats are rowing " full tilt," to get in 
a shot at the prize, the more so that, now the animal has 
appeared above water, it is seen that the harpoon has 
fallen too low — too near the belly — to cause a really 
serious wound. The only hope is to get up with him 
again, or else to be content to let him tire himself out, a 
proceeding which may last all day and possibly all night. 
One boat ahead of the rest seeks a convenient spot from 
which to throw, for a whale is not an animal to be 
" headed off in front " at pleasure. Guided by the lie of 
the tail, the cox steers for where he can be moderately 
sure of safety when the whale starts forward, and then 
shouts to his harpooner. The spear flashes through the 
air and seems as though it would catch the monster above 
the fin-joint. 

But before the point can reach him, the whale, having 
now drawn the first line taut enough to have found that 
there is resistance at the end of it, rolls forward without 
sinking, and the second harpoon is lodged considerably 
nearer the tail than the fin. The tortured animal wanted 
but this fresh spur to goad him into a headlong rush for- 
ward ; there is a yell from the first boat as it is dragged 
almost out of the water for an instant, and then, at the 
full length of its cable, is towed along at break-neck 
speed. 

" Chuck us a line, sharp ! " cries the cox to the boat 
nearest to him as his own flies past her. The harpooner 
in this boat is prepared for the emergency and throws his 
painter deftly into the hands of the other cox, who thus 
joins up the two little vessels. If there should be a 

239 



WHALES AND WHALING 

possible chance, a third will seek to join herself on in like 
manner, for every extra weight will tend to shorten the 
whaled journey. 

Groaning and roaring so that it can be heard three 
miles away, the wounded creature dashes on till it has 
exhausted the length of line that hangs to the second 
harpoon, then pauses for a moment, for it finds the weight 
behind increased by a third boat. Now it is the turn of 
the helmsmen to feel nervous ; each one of them has but 
two eyes — one for his boat, and one for the whale ; and 
just now he would give a considerable sum to possess a 
third, to keep on the other two boats. The two that are 
tied together are in little danger from each other, but a 
collision between them and the third depends largely on 
the whale's pleasure. He has enough rope to keep him 
from " rounding on " the crews, for unless anything un- 
foreseen should happen, they can dodge him before he can 
get to them. 

The remaining boats, meanwhile, are watching for an 
opportunity of giving chase whenever possible, or are lying 
in wait in case the whale should turn their way. One 
sharper or luckier than the rest has been able to pull 
round to the whale's far side as he stops, doubtful whether 
to dive again or not, and the men in the towed boats 
breathe a little more freely as they catch a glimpse of her 
sharp bows near the monster's tail ; for they know that 
with a little luck a fatal blow is about to be struck. 

The harpooner in this boat is leaning so far forward 
that every moment it seems as if he must overbalance ; 
holding not the ordinary harpoon, but a broad-bladed lance 

240 



WHALES AND WHALING 

or a tethered axe. His crew are resting on their oars, or 
gently backwatering if the current is with them, while he 
and his cox stand with their eyes fixed upon the enormous 
tail. The beast is going to dive again and, the moment 
the tail is raised, the harpooner is going to try for a cut 
at the backbone. 

The tail rises, and before it can fall or the head dis- 
appear, the harpooner, at the risk of his own life and 
those of the crew, throws his lance under it. There is 
another fearful roar from the whale which almost drowns 
the cox's shout to the rowers to backwater, and the tail 
drops inert as the four oar-blades lift the little craft out 
of harm's way. 

A triumphant shout from the crew informs the other 
boats that the blood is streaming from the new wound, 
and they know that the lower part of the whale's verte- 
bral column has been severed. Meanwhile these others 
are not idle, for they have pulled nearer again, and their 
tow-ropes are once more hanging slack as the unfortunate 
animal makes another dive. This time he scarcely seems 
to be down a moment, then up again, and, distracted with 
pain and with rage at not being able to shake off his tor- 
mentors, makes a feeble turn to the right, presenting a 
broadside to the three boats that are fast coming up with 
him. He will never get away now, for his principal means 
of locomotion is useless. 

Another harpoon whizzes from the foremost boat ; the 

point cleaves its way through an artery and the blood 

spurts out in spasmodic jets. Again he dives, but for less 

than a minute, and when he comes up to blow there is 

Q 241 



WHALES AND WHALING 

something else ejected from the blow-holes besides vapour 
— two streams of blood, which the fishermen know is a sign 
that all is over with him. He may live another hour, 
making frantic little plunges that avail him nothing, but 
he will never swim another mile. As a fresh harpoon 
strikes him he sounds once more, this time almost without 
a roar ; is down for a couple of minutes, then comes up 
slowly and lying on his back. Poor whale ! his days are 
ended ; let him bleed — the more the better ; the less likely 
he is to sink. 

And now the body must be towed, perhaps a couple of 
miles, back to the ship ; heavy work for even four or five 
boats 1 crews ; but at last the enormous carcass is pulled 
alongside the larger vessel and moored to her ; and then, 
unless they are going off after another catch, the work of 
cutting up begins. At one time this used to be done by 
the men standing on the body with spiked boots and cut- 
ting off the rolls of blubber as far as they could. A more 
recent method consisted in cutting away the flesh under 
the mouth with spade-shaped axes ; removing the tongue, 
and then slicing off the blubber in almost spiral strips 
from mouth to tail, and hauling it aboard. The blubber 
was then split into thicknesses of about half an inch and 
boiled on deck over a furnace that was kept fierce by the 
unmelted pieces of fatty tissue skimmed from the top of 
the cauldron. To prevent danger from fire, there was a 
space between the grate and the deck, through which cold 
water constantly flowed. 

The average amount of blubber taken from a whale 
would be about twenty-five tons. The blubber-coat lies 

242 



WHALES AND WHALING 

immediately under the skin, and is six inches thick, except 
that on the under-lip, which generally has a depth of two 
or three feet. 

The toothless whales are compensated for their want of 
teeth by the presence of baleen, or " whalebone, 11 which is 
arranged in their mouths in a rather peculiar manner, 
plates of this valuable substance lying along the palate, 
their inner edges terminating in fringes of filaments 
which fall like a curtain over the interior of the mouth, 
and serve as a strainer to the animal's food ; for, as is well 
known, the swallowing apparatus of this species is rein lively 
small, the largest fish it can take being a herring. 

Mankind is not the whale's only enemy. As near home 
as the Hebrides a battle may not infrequently be seen 
between a whale and a group of "threshers" or fox- 
sharks. The thresher is about thirteen feet long, and has 
a very effective weapon in its upper tail-fin, which is as 
long as its whole body, and with which it can deal a blow 
of terrific power. Sometimes springing several yards in 
the air (these creatures can jump as high as a mast-head) 
it will deal bang after bang on the luckless leviathan, the 
reports of the blows echoing like rifle-shots. The fisher- 
men say that there is a secret understanding between this 
amiable fish and the narwhal, and that while the fox- 
shark thrashes above, his ally thrusts and stabs below, till 
between them the whale bleeds to death and affords them 
a meal or two. 

Another variety of the toothless or baleen whales is 
the Rorqual, which has a soft back fin and curious 

243 



WHALES AND WHALING 

puckers along its upper side, and sometimes reaches a 
length of more than a hundred feet. Round the Maldive 
and Seychelle Islands, in the Indian Ocean, are the fa- 
vourite hunting-grounds for them, and the American and 
Scandinavian whalers have almost a monopoly there. 

The typical toothed whale is the Sperm or Cachalot, 
eighty feet long, and frequenting both the northern and 
southern seas. It is easily to be distinguished from any 
other of its tribe, if only by its enormous square head ; 
the back is black, the belly white, the skin soft and silky. 
It is gregarious, and travels in shoals of a couple of 
hundred. More pugnacious than most other species, it 
will turn to bay when attacked, and will deliberately 
charge or butt the pursuing ship. It is hunted princi- 
pally for the sake of the oil secreted in its head and in a 
tube running along its back (spermaceti) ; its teeth yield 
an inferior sort of ivory ; its body is used up like those of 
other kinds, and ambergris is taken from its entrails. 

It has become proverbial on account of the love and 
care bestowed by the mother on her young ; and no 
wonder. Over and over again fishermen have seen the 
mother sacrifice her life for the sake of her little one. 
Indeed, when a whale-boat encounters a suckling mother, 
it invariably attacks the young one, knowing that, in her 
anxiety to save the offspring, the older animal will not 
only interpose her body between it and the boat, but will 
be so taken up with shielding it that she will become an 
easy prey to the harpoons. She will even put her fin 
under the little thing's body to help it to swim the faster 
when pursued. 

244 



WHALES AND WHALING 

The modern whaler is very different from anything we 
have yet considered. First, there is the stout three to 
live hundred ton vessel, with her crew of about fifty 
hands, her six or eight double-pointed rowing boats, 
thirty feet long, and manned by six ; her seventy-five 
horse-power engine, with her armoury of windlasses, 
boilers, oil-tank (built to hold nearly three hundred tons 
of oil), and her general workmanlike turn-out. And 
secondly, there is the boat beloved of the Norwegian and 
American whalers — a still more business-like craft ; a fast 
hundred-ton twin screw, as obedient as a steam yacht, 
with an elaborate look-out forward, and one of the most 
deadly inventions of our day — the harpoon-gun — rigged 
up in her bows. 

The first may be seen setting off from Dundee for a 
two-year cruise in the Antarctic regions ; and a very 
gambling prospect she has before her. In 1895 a Dundee 
boat, the Arctic, came home from a short trip with ten 
whales, which meant five tons of whalebone, at that time 
worth ten thousand pounds, as well as twenty thousand 
gallons of oil. Recent scarcity of Antarctic whales has, 
of course, tremendously increased the value of the catches 
— to such an extent, in fact, that whalebone, which fifty 
years ago sold at the rate of a shilling a pound, is now 
worth about thirty times that amount. 

The second kind of boat, which in a few years is 
destined to drive most other whalers out of the field, may 
be seen to the best advantage south of Greenland. 
Watch her as she routs out a cachalot or a fin-back. As 
before, the whale heralds his appearance by roars and 

245 



WHALES AND WHALING 

grumbles and eddies, and the boat, travelling her twelve 
or thirteen knots an hour, is quickly in a position to 
launch her deadly shaft. The gun, seventy-five pounds 
in weight, four and a half feet long, including three feet 
of barrel, is fixed on a swivel ; it has a range of from 
thirty to forty yards, and an ordinary pistol-handle. 
From this is fired the " bomb-lance, 1 "' an American inven- 
tion, a sort of improvement on Devisme's balle foudroy- 
ante> It is a cast-iron tube containing a small quantity 
of gunpowder ; is pointed at one end, and at the other, 
which is tethered, has a match or fuse which, when the 
ball has penetrated into the whale's body, explodes the 
powder. If by any chance this explosion should take 
place in one of the lungs, the whale is dead instantly. 

Many improvements have been tried — some carried into 
effect — on this deadly contrivance. A great many years 
ago, when it was first used, a celebrated French scientist, 
Dr. Thiercelin, tried the addition of various chemicals to 
the powder in the bomb, and ten Newfoundland whales 
shot in this manner died within spaces varying from four 
to eighteen minutes. 

The still newer Norwegian improvement is a bomb with 
a shank fitted to it ; the bomb enters the whale's body, 
carrying with it this shank, explodes, inflicting dangerous 
if not mortal injuries, and, as the animal moves forward, 
the pull on the line to which the weapon is fastened sets 
free two or four grips, or pins hinged at one end, which 
embed themselves barb-like in the flesh, thereby fixing the 
shank so that it cannot possibly move. 

As the boat comes within a few fathoms of the whale, 

246 



WHALES AND WHALING 

the gun is fired, its explosion being echoed by a second as 
the bomb bursts, and the whale gives an agonised bellow 
and disappears, dragging the tow-line after it at electric 
speed. It should be mentioned that the cachalot can 
comfortably remain under water for nearly an hour. 
When he comes up again perhaps he is a quarter of a 
mile away, blowing and roaring so that we suspect he has 
not been injured in the vital part. Steam is put on, but 
not too much ; at any moment the formidable giant is 
capable of turning and making a dash at its pursuers, and 
while one half of the skipper's energies are expended in 
trying to get within range again, the other half are given 
up to preparing to dodge any sudden turn the whale may 
be pleased to make. 

But instead of charging he sounds again, perhaps 
several times ; the boat hesitates and slows down. On his 
reappearance there are signs that he is weaker ; true, he 
now begins to try the full length of his tether ; he even 
starts to tow the boat along at a good rate, but his speed 
very soon flags. 

" Don't spend another charge on him ; let him tire 
down, 1 "' is the skipper's order to the men in the bow ; and, 
even as he speaks, the rope slacks again, and very slowly 
the mighty body begins to roll over on to its back. A 
chorus of cheering rises from the boat, but is speedily 
changed into a chorus of something else as the whale 
suddenly disappears from view. The crew look gloomy, 
and with good reason ; they can cut away that cable as 
soon as they like, for the whale has sunk and will shortly 
be the sole property of a colony of fifteen-foot Greenland 

247 



WHALES AND WHALING 

sharks that are lying in wait with an eye to such a 
contingency. 

Naturally everyone has a reason to offer for the disaster; 
one fellow swears that the whale was wounded in the 
abdomen ; another that it never once spouted blood ; 
either may be right ; for half a dozen reasons a dead 
whale is liable to sink ; invariably if the water have 
rushed into its windpipe. 

Such accidents, however, are comparatively rare ; it is 
more likely that the whale will float, and that the sharks 
will be cheated by his being towed ashore ; or, if the boat 
has a busy day before it, by his being buoyed up and left for 
a time. Boats of this sort, that go no great distance from 
home, carry no gear for quartering the whale ; they merely 
tow the carcass as near to the shore as possible, whence 
it is drawn in chains up the beach, by steam-power, to the 
butchering sheds. On some boats they have a practice, 
before mooring the body, of inflating it with air pumped 
in by the engines, very much as boys blow out a frog ; it 
can then be hitched to a buoy without fear of its sinking, 
unless one of its enemies comes along and makes a hole in 
it — a danger which is warded off by a man and a gun 
being left in charge, in a small boat. 

I said further back that not an ounce of the whale need 
be wasted ; its flesh is as sweet and wholesome as beef ; 
the oil, and the whalebone from the toothless whales, are 
of course of great value ; the skeleton is made up into all 
sorts of " earthenware " vessels ; and now some sages have 
arisen to show that the skin can be tanned for leather and 
the milk of the females converted into condensed milk. 



WHALES AND WHALING 

The spermaceti from the head of the cachalot is freed 
from the phocenine or rank oil which it contains by treat- 
ing it with chloride of lime, oak-bark, and sulphuric acid ; 
is clarified, and henceforth known as sperm oil, a crystalline 
solid fat from which wax candles are made. 

One more word about the other valuable whale-product 
— ambergris, which is simply incompletely digested food 
taken from the intestines, generally in hard lumps, four 
or five from each cachalot. It is of the consistency of 
beeswax, so much so that it adheres to the knife when it 
is scraped and a moderate heat suffices to make it soft and 
oily. Its peculiarly sweet scent is increased by heat or 
friction. Immense quantities are imported into Southern 
Europe for the manufacture of perfumery, and among 
the Easterns it is still used as a flavouring in cooking. 



249 



CHAPTER XX 
HOW SPONGES ARE PROCURED 

What sponge is — Where it grows — Sponge-diving — The undressed 
diver — A "dressed" diver at work — His dress — The diver on the 
bottom— Signals — Coming up — Dredging for sponges— Awkward 
gear — Sponge-harpooning — The spy-glass — The Adriatic trade— 
Sponge-culture — Florida Keys — Sponge-hooking in the Bahamas. 

A SPONGE is a skeleton, not of one animal but of 
countless thousands, and it represents, as Professor 
Huxley has expressed it, " a kind of sub-aqueous 
city, where the people are arranged about the streets and 
roads in such a manner that each can easily appropriate 
his food from the water as it passes along. - " 

This skeleton may be flexible and elastic and horny, as 
in the case of the ordinary washing sponge ; or it may be 
calcareous, chalky, and therefore useless for the purposes 
to which we ordinarily devote this substance. The 
animals which inhabit it, and which are almost at the 
bottom of the zoological ladder (for they come under the 
head of protozoa), take the form of a jelly-like mass, not 
unlike the uncooked white of an egg ; and this separates 
itself from its shell or skeleton when the sponge is lifted 
out of the water and squeezed. 

Sponges are not by any means confined to salt water, 
although those of commerce are invariably marine ; nor 

250 



HOW SPONGES ARE PROCURED 

are they necessarily a rarity in any warm or temperate 
part of the sea, but they develop better and reproduce 
more freely in some beds than in others. They were 
regarded by the old naturalists as peculiar to the Mediter- 
ranean, but we all know that small varieties are found 
round the British coasts ; the beautiful " mermaid's 
glove " or five-fingered sponge is not seldom found in the 
oyster-dredge, or, for that matter, on the fish-hook. 
Moreover, in the year 1840, a European sponge-merchant 
discovered that the valuable substance was as common as 
mussels on the reef between Florida and the Bahamas, 
and since then the West Indian industry has in some 
respects promised to rival that of the Mediterranean. 

The spongy skeleton adheres very firmly to the sea- 
bottom or the rocks on which it grows, and how to obtain 
it uninjured is a very serious problem, which the fishermen 
have endeavoured to solve in various ways : by diving, by 
dredging, and by harpooning or hooking. 

The first method is the oldest and, from the merchant's 
point of view, the safest and most profitable, and it has 
been practised round about the Greek Islands, Sicily, the 
Levant, and the north of Africa for ages. Six thousand 
men are now employed in the Levant sponge-fishery alone, 
and about the same number in other parts of the 
Mediterranean. These Greek divers, like those of Ceylon, 
are trained to their task almost from infancy, and become 
gradually accustomed to working under water and to 
enduring a pressure so great that less than half of it 
would mean death to the untrained man. 

But sponge sometimes chooses a depth of from one to 

251 



HOW SPONGES ARE PROCURED 

two hundred fathoms for its habitation, and we have 
seen, in the case of the pearl-divers, that thirteen fathoms 
is a depth that taxes an undressed diver's powers to 
almost their full extent. Some of the Sicilians and 
Greeks will venture to fifteen, but the brief time which 
they are able to remain under water at that depth is of 
little use for such hard and lengthy work, and the effort 
seems almost to rob them of the power to wrench the 
larger sponges free from their natural moorings. There- 
fore, the boat-owners have of late years been glad to 
engage professional divers of another sort from England 
and France, or from among their own people, who, when 
" dressed,"" can remain down a very considerable length of 
time. Such men boast that they could stay for ever in 
five-fathom water, and any one of them who knows his 
business can do sponge-work in fifteen fathoms for at 
least an hour, and can remain in from twenty to fifty 
fathoms for longer than an undressed diver could stay in 
ten ; all the same, even an exceptionally strong British 
diver would refuse to work for any length of time in more 
than twenty-eight. Hence the need for dredging, or 
other mechanical means, when the sponge-ground is 
covered with more than fifty fathoms of water. 

Let us watch the undressed divers first. Their way of 
going to work differs in some respects from that of the 
pearl-fishers. When the depth has been taken, and the 
position of the sponges ascertained by means of a spy- 
glass, a rope, equivalent to the depth, is made fast by 
one end to the boat ; to the other end is tied a large 
white stone, triangular or oblong, which has a hole drilled 

252 



HOW SPONGES ARE PROCURED 

through one corner. The man, instead of putting his 
foot in a loop, gives the weighted end of the line a turn 
or two round his breast and then springs into the water like 
an ordinary swimmer ; some prefer merely to hold the rope 
by one hand. Sharks, we know, are plentiful hereabout, 
and there are no shark-charmers. Still one seldom hears 
of a diver being attacked ; there is always a gun or two 
on board, and there is the same amount of bustle and 
splashing and shouting as in the Gulf of Manaar. 

Arrived at the bottom, the diver — if he be in the 
habit of keeping his eyes open — uses the white stones as 
a landmark, for there is no reason to suppose that he will 
be lucky enough to drop in the middle of a sponge-bed. 
If the water be clear he will then leave go of the rope 
and wander round, always able to find his way back as 
long as he can see the stone. But, as often as not, there 
is trouble going on at the bottom ; a fight among the 
ground-fish, or a dolphin poking about after molluscs, 
and the water is as thick as a London fog — even the 
man's own movements, in some grounds, are sufficient to 
cloud everything. In such a case the diver dare not let 
go of the rope, but must carry the stone about with him. 
Hurriedly tearing off all the sponges that lie to his hand, 
he stuffs them into his net-bag (some men carry no bag, 
but tuck their gatherings under the left arm), gives a 
couple of jerks to the rope, and he and the bag and the 
stone are swiftly hoisted up. 

It may be asked, How is the man at the top to tell 
the difference between the signal for hauling and the 
natural tugs on the rope caused by the diver in moving 

253 



HOW SPONGES ARE PROCURED 

from point to point ? But the man at the top, it must 
be remembered, is a fisherman, and the sense of touch of 
a man who has to do with lines acquires a subtilty that 
might almost be compared to a musician's "ear."" Un- 
consciously he follows every one of the diver's movements 
hither and thither, and, in ninety-nine cases out of a 
hundred, could be relied upon to haul up at the right 
moment without any signal at all. 

The diver is now lifted into the boat and gets his 
breath while the next man goes down. I have seen it 
stated that whenever these fellows come to the surface, 
blood flows from their mouths, ears, and noses. How 
many gallons of blood do the authors of such a statement 
suppose a man can afford to lose in the course of a day ? 
As a rule, once and once only does a Mediterranean diver 
expect to bleed in this manner, and that is when he goes 
down for the first time after being away from such work 
some months — as, for instance, on the first day of the 
season. What is more, the divers regard this as not only 
a healthy sign, but as a sign that they are fit for their 
work. Indeed, if any man should find that bleeding 
does not then occur he will not attempt another descent 
that day, nor will he start regular work till he has 
bled. 

The dressed diver's performance is a far more preten- 
tious affair, for, as the reader is aware, he must be sup- 
plied with air all the time he is down ; also, the lowering 
and hauling of a man to whose natural weight a dress 
weighing a hundred and forty-seven pounds (ten stone 
seven !) is added, is a very different matter from dealing 

254 



HOW SPONGES ARE PROCURED 

with a naked man. A successful diver must be both born 
and made, and any member of the trade could tell, 
almost at a glance, whether or no a stranger would ever 
be of any use for such work. The ideal diver is the short 
or medium-height man, with markedly sloping shoulders 
and very deep chest, such a build being the best calcu- 
lated to resist the terrible water-pressure. 

The dressing of the man is rapidly performed by one 
or two members of the crew ; and here a brief description 
of a diver's " rig " may be of interest to the reader. The 
" dress " goes on first, and consists of coat, trousers, and 
socks all in one piece ; this fits very loosely to the figure, 
is made of mackintosh and lined with india-rubber, and 
round the cuffs of this strange garment rubber rings are 
fastened to keep it water-tight at the wrists. Then 
comes the heavy breast-plate which is of copper, and 
serves to relieve the chest of undue pressure ; and to this 
is screwed a band of brass which goes round the chest to 
the back. The heavily- weighted boots are then laced on, 
and the cord or " life-line " knotted loosely round the 
waist. Lastly there is the somewhat gruesome-looking 
helmet, with whose shape all are familiar; the "eyes 11 
are window-panes on a small scale, protected by wire 
gauze. The life-line is then carried up the left side of the 
body, passes through a clip on the helmet, then is brought 
down again over the chest where it meets a short cord 
which has also been tied round the waist. 

Now the breathing apparatus. The nozzle of a wire- 
lined rubber tube, like a garden-hose, is screwed into 
a hole on the side of the helmet ; the tube is carried 

255 



HOW SPONGES ARE PROCURED 

under one arm, and looped up once more to the helmet ; 
the other end of the tube communicates with a two- 
or three-cylinder air pump. It can, of course, be joined 
up to any length, and is made as long as the life-line. 

Thus habited, our diver is lifted over the side of 
the vessel on to a ladder which runs some little distance 
under water, and when he is certain that all his gear 
is quite safe, he lets himself go. One man watches the 
life-line, another pays out the tube, and one or two more 
turn the handle of the air-pump. As soon as he reaches 
the bottom, the diver takes from his shoulders a coil 
of thin cord which he has brought down with him — 
the " track-line."" Perhaps one end is weighted ; if not 
he ties it to whatever fixture he can find and then sets off 
on his travels to the end of his tether, which is a fairly 
long one, letting the track-line run from his hand as he 
goes ; stopping every now and then to gather the finest 
and largest sponges he can see, and packing them as 
closely as possible in the net-bag that hangs over his 
shoulders. 

If the trawler feels some excitement when the first 
opportunity arrives of peeping into a net that has come 
up from the bottom, what must be the diver's first feel- 
ing on finding himself free to roam about for an hour on 
one of the world's oldest if not richest submarine treasure- 
grounds ? What would not most antiquarians give to 
spend an hour in such a spot, off Sicily, or Cyprus, or 
Greece ? 

Men can gather sponges and yet keep a watchful eye on 
possible submerged treasure, and in this way very valuable 

256 




Hauling up a Sponge-Diver 



Nowadays much of the sponge-fishing off the Greek Islands is done by 
" dressed" divers. 



HOW SPONGES ARE PROCURED 

articles have often been fished up. Sometimes the diver 
brings up a " surprise packet" on speculation. I knew one 
Mediterranean diver who, with great trouble and at some 
risk, succeeded in taking on board a mysterious iron box, 
that suggested at least deeds, if not banknotes, jewels, 
and bonds. When he came to open it in the presence of 
an admiring and expectant crew, he found nothing but 
a ruined silk hat and a dozen collars that — insult added 
to injury — were a size or two too small for every man 
on board. 

Meanwhile, how has our man been managing about his 
breathing ? The question is not so idle as might seem, for 
all men do not respire alike, and inhaling air that has 
been pumped down from a height of about sixty yards, is 
not quite the same thing as breathing in the ordinary 
way. Perhaps too much air is being sent down ; perhaps 
not enough ; perhaps air that has already been used is 
being forced back by the fresh draught. Certainly the 
latter should not occur with a diver who knows his work ; 
for the helmet contains two valves through which all foul 
air can be ejected. To regulate the supply from above, 
one of the crew keeps his hand continually on the life- 
line, and calls out the signals as they come up from the 
bottom to the men who are working the pump. If the 
diver wants more air he gives three sharp jerks at the 
rope ; if he already has too much, two jerks. From 
time to time he also gives a special " all right " signal 
— a very necessary precaution when he may not be ex- 
pected above water for nearly an hour ; for in that 
time there is no telling what might happen. Apart from 
r 257 



HOW SPONGES ARE PROCURED 

sharks, saw-fish, and sword-fish which may at least dis- 
commode the diver or interfere with the gear, there is 
always the possibility of something going wrong with 
a man's heart when he is at work in great depths ; 
the air-valves, too, cannot be guaranteed never to get 
out of order ; therefore this signal is resorted to, unless 
there are several divers working together on the same 
spot. 

When he can remain down no longer, the sponge-fisher 
very carefully fastens his bag and even ropes it to his 
body ; then gives the " pull up " signal — one long sus- 
tained pull till the hauling begins. The care that he has 
expended in making his catch quite safe is explained now. 
To come up in the natural position, head foremost, re- 
quires a certain amount of effort on his own part ; an 
awkward or half-exhausted diver may come up feet first, 
or lying on his back or face ; for there is no certainty 
that the weights will " trim " properly when the dress is 
inflated ; and that being the case, what would become of 
a loosely fastened bag ? 

The hauling up of a diver is not greatly different from 
the hauling up of a net or a dredge, as regards the rope 
and the weight ; it is hard work for two men ; often im- 
possible for one. But there is also the tube to be seen 
to, and this is where the difficulty comes in ; for on the 
one hand, the hauling of it should keep pace with that 
of the life-line ; on the other, no undue strain must be 
allowed to come on it. At last the weird, black figure 
appears, totters up the ladder and waits while the men 
lift him on board ; then off comes the helmet, and then — 

258 



HOW SPONGES ARE PROCURED 

but we all know what the first breath of unimpeded air 
is after we have been confined in a close atmosphere ; 
multiply the pleasure of that by a hundred. But use is 
everything ; in a few moments our diver will be off to 
the bottom again. 

Dredging for sponges is probably a less-known branch 
of the trade ; it forms the winter industry of the Greek 
fishermen of Asia Minor and North Africa, — winter, 
because then the equinoctial and autumn storms have 
had plenty of time to tear up the seaweed which would 
otherwise fill up the dredge, or hamper the movement of 
the gear. 

The dredge is worked from a large sailing-boat, in most 
cases the tow-line being fastened to the bowsprit. Gen- 
erally speaking it is only used in water that is too deep 
for the divers ; but, in the island of Syme — one of the 
chief centres of the sponge industry — and on parts of the 
Syrian coast where the sponges sometimes lie close in to 
shore, it is shot from a large rowing-boat and hauled in 
from the beach. This dredge is a formidable-looking 
arrangement ; imagine an immense packing-case three 
feet high, and about eighteen feet square ; bigger round, 
that is to say, than a room of average size ; open at 
the top, and having a large net-bag hanging from the 
bottom. The meshes of this net are four inches square, 
and are made of camers-hair cord as thick as a man's 
finger. 

This unwieldy apparatus is thrown overboard on a good 
sponge-ground and towed gently along as if it were a 
trawl, the boat drifting wherever she likes. Like a trawl, 

259 



HOW SPONGES ARE PROCURED 

too, it is hauled up, two or four bridles connecting the 
tow-line with the frame. As the sponges are taken out, 
they are squeezed dry and thrown in the hold, and the 
dredge is dropped overboard again. 

It will easily be understood that such an awkward 
method of working would not be much favoured by fisher- 
men who are lucky enough to find sponge in moderately 
shallow water. For those who object to the dredge and 
who do not care to dive, there is still the harpoon ; and 
this is the favourite tackle with many of the Greek fisher- 
men on both sides of the Mediterranean (for the sponge 
trade of North Africa is mainly in Greek hands). 

The large sailing vessels thus engaged take with them 
several small boats from which the harpooning is done ; 
two or three men to a boat. The harpoon is simply a 
fork with a very long handle, to which an additional 
handle can, if necessary, be screwed. Each boat carries 
the spy-glass of which mention has already been made — 
a very crude yet satisfactory means of seeing to the 
bottom and discovering the lie of the ground. It is 
sometimes unkindly described as a bucket with a glass 
bottom, and indeed it is not much else, being a zinc 
cylinder about eighteen inches high and big enough to 
admit a man's head ; with a circular sheet of glass let in 
to the bottom of it. When such an instrument is pushed 
a foot or so below the surface a man can see through as 
much as thirty fathoms of moderately clear water. 

As soon as the sponge is sighted, the digging and 
poking and stabbing begin, and it is surprising what very 
large catches skilled men can make in this manner. 

260 



HOW SPONGES ARE PROCURED 

Whatever may be the means chosen for obtaining the 
sponge, its treatment when taken ashore is pretty much 
the same. It is first rinsed and squeezed till every par- 
ticle of gelatinous animal matter has been got rid of; 
then it is exposed to the air for a day or two, after which 
it is taken back to the water and thrown into an enclosure 
made of planks and stakes, and left to clean itself. Then 
it is taken out again, trodden vigorously by bare-footed 
men till it is once more squeezed as dry as possible, and 
finally is hung up to dry before being sent on to the 
picking and sorting warehouse. These sponges, it should 
be remarked, are the finer ones, used for bath and toilet ; 
the cheap, coarser articles used for horse and carriage- 
washing come from the American grounds ; but, before 
we discuss those, there is another European ground which 
calls for mention. 

Along the east side of the Adriatic Sea sponges are 
found at almost all depths, and the fishery, which is 
carried on by the Dalmatians and Croats, is in a very 
flourishing condition. It is done from small boats and by 
means of harpoons. These men employ a similar spy- 
glass to that of the Greeks, and they facilitate its use in 
a very ingenious, if simple, manner. Every boat carries a 
small supply of pebbles, and, when the look-out man 
wishes to inspect the ground, he dips four or five of these 
in oil and tosses them one by one in a curved line in front 
of the boat. Each pebble, as it sinks, scatters tiny drops 
all the way down, which help to clear the water, thus 
affording a more unobstructed view to the spy-glass. 

The Dalmatians and others have latterly taken to 

261 



HOW SPONGES ARE PROCURED 

breeding sponge on scientific lines, which merely means 
that they avail themselves of the natural reproductive 
instinct of the animals which it contains. In the autumn 
the seeds or gemmules which occur in the interior of the 
sponge body begin to form themselves, and gradually 
every seed develops into a sponge particle, which during 
the following summer becomes an ovum ; and this, on be- 
coming fertilised, as often as not separates from the main 
body of the sponge, attaches itself to some rock or other 
object, and, little by little, grows into a separate colony 
of animals. By experiments, scientists have proved that 
a small bit of sponge torn from the main bulk will, if 
circumstances are favourable and if there are sufficient 
gemmules contained in it, quickly increase in size through 
the breeding of its occupants ; and now the rearing 
of sponges is as much a recognised industry as oyster 
culture is. 

From the coast of Florida to the Bahamas there 
stretches a long and — from a seaman's point of view — 
very dangerous chain of islands, mostly of coral formation, 
and known as the Florida Keys. Some of the islands are 
just below sea-level, others just above; others have been 
slowly worn down by the action of the water and remain 
at varying heights below the surface. On and about these 
reefs it was accidentally discovered that sponge had been 
breeding very freely, probably for many centuries ; and so, 
during the last sixty years the horse-sponge trade has 
grown up — mainly on the Bahamas side of the reef; and 
so profitable has it become that the islanders are now ex- 

262 



HOW SPONGES ARE PROCURED 

porting sponge to the annual value of nearly a hundred 
and twenty thousand pounds. The beds extend over 
several thousand square miles, and are, in all reasonable 
probability, inexhaustible. 

Here sponge-diving is almost unknown ; what need, 
when in many cases the sponges grow so close to the sur- 
face that it looks as if you could gather them with your 
hand ? Instead, the fishermen use the harpoon, or a 
hooked form of it ; a three-pronged rake, we might better 
term it. Every week a fleet of schooner-rigged boats, of 
any size up to twenty-five tons, sets off from the shores 
of a few of the islands, each carrying several two-men 
dinghies or dories, like those used by the Newfoundland 
cod-fishers, and manned largely by negroes. While the 
ships lie at anchor the little boats pull about over the 
reefs, the sponge-hooker lying over either stern or bows, 
and snatching at everything that looks promising. 

Hooking here requires far greater care and skill than in 
the Mediterranean, for everybody knows how soft horse- 
sponge is, and how easily torn. The aim is to slide the 
rake immediately between the rock and the root of the 
sponge, and so wrench it bodily off. 

At the end of the day the dinghies pull back to their 
schooner, and the sponges are stowed away on board. 
After a week of good catches the fleet is able to return 
and land the cargo, if " land v may be allowed to mean 
bringing the sponges in to shore by the boat-load and 
throwing them straight into the "crawl,' 1 as the West 
Indians call the staked enclosure such as has been 
described. Here the sponges lie a few feet under water, 

263 



HOW SPONGES ARE PROCURED 

and for a week or two are periodically squeezed and 
rinsed ; then they are thrown on the beach to dry, and 
are packed for sending away. 

The people of Queensland too are now developing a not 
inconsiderable trade in sponges. 



264 



CHAPTER XXI 

DOLPHINS, PORPOISES, AND 
MANATEES 

The dolphin — Misconceptions about it — Dolphin-catching among the 
Faroe islanders — Fresh-water dolphins : the Inia and the Soosoo — 
The grampus — Porpoises — Fishermen's hatred of them — The nar- 
whal — Its tusk — An Iceland narwhal-hunt — The Greenlanders' 
method — The Caaing whale and the beluga — Trapping and seining 
belugas — The dugong and the manatee — A manatee-hunt. 

THE cetacean family includes many water monsters 
that, though scarcely classifiable under the head 
of whales, are hunted or " fished " for in much the 
same manner, and generally for similar reasons ; such are 
the dolphin, the porpoise, and the like. These have in 
common with the whale a fish-like form and a horizontal 
tail, and like them belong to the mammalia. Let us take 
the dolphin first. 

One very interesting point in connection with this 
animal is that in appearance it is very unlike the popular 
conception of it ; and for this there is a good reason. 
Classical mythology practically raised it to an object of 
worship. Neptune, said the Greeks, turned himself into 
a dolphin on a certain occasion ; so did Apollo ; there- 
fore temples that were dedicated to either deity were 

265 



DOLPHINS, PORPOISES 

more often than not ornamented with representations of 
the sacred sea-beast. Many of these images were at first 
very roughly executed ; sculpture had not yet reached 
the high perfection which it subsequently attained, and 
probably none of the artists had ever seen a dolphin very 
near. The later sculptors were too loyal to the work of 
their predecessors as well as too much bound by tradition 
to attempt to alter or improve on the generally accepted 
idea of what a dolphin ought to be, and so century after 
century went by, still leaving the people under the im- 
pression that it was a sort of dog-headed fish. 

So far from its head being round, it has a much longer 
and sharper muzzle than the porpoise, and has been 
known from time immemorial among the French fisher- 
men as the bee cToie or goose-bill. Its average length 
is a little over seven feet. It has a most shark-like 
appetite, and will not only gorge itself on fish, but will 
make a meal of an elderly, or wounded, or dying brother ; 
and, as its mouth is furnished with about a hundred 
and eighty long, pointed teeth, it is well equipped for 
such a repast. The home of the common dolphin is the 
Mediterranean and the North Atlantic ; but varieties are 
found all over the world, the largest known species being 
the grampus, which may be seen anywhere north of our 
own shores. 

The dolphin has blow-holes or spiracles ; but, unlike 
those of the whale, they are joined together so as to 
make but one opening, which is placed a little above the 
eyes. In colour it is black, gradually shading off to 
white under the belly ; in addition to its flippers it has 

266 



AND MANATEES 

a long pointed baek-h'n, and so swift are its movements 
that it is sometimes called the Sea Arrow. 

In days gone by, sailors and fishermen credited the 
animal with all the ferocity and voracity of the shark, 
and told weird tales of shoals of them pursuing a boat 
for the sake of a meal of human flesh, making wild dashes 
and jumps to seize the crew, even leaping on board after 
their prey, and being deprived of it only after a battle in 
which axes and guns figured. 

This belief has died hard, for the reason, I suppose, 
that "a lie that is half a truth " is harder to fight than 
" a lie that is all a lie." For the dolphin does swim after 
ships and boats, and he does jump aboard sometimes, 
though not with the intention of attacking the crew. 
He is an exceedingly astute being, and has discovered 
that from time to time a good deal of waste food 
and rubbish is thrown overboard, and that this attracts 
the fish in great quantities ; fish that under ordinary 
circumstances would elude him by their swift dodging 
or by diving into the mud ; therefore, because a boat 
generally means a meal, he will follow it for miles. As 
to his jumping on board, he may do that out of sheer 
playfulness, or by accident, when springing up in pursuit 
of a fish that has leapt into the air in order to escape 
him. 

His extreme fondness for the flesh of the various flying- 
fish is well known. In the warmer parts of the Atlantic 
he will spend his entire day in hunting them ; leaping up 
after them and sometimes snapping them in mid-air ; 
lying in wait just below the surface at a spot where one 

267 



DOLPHINS, PORPOISES 

is likely to fall, or dogging one particular fish till he has 
thoroughly tired it out. In leaping or springing he closely 
resembles the salmon, curving his tail round as far as he 
can, and then " letting himself go." 

The special hunting-ground for these creatures is on 
the east coast of Stromo, one of the Faroe Islands. Here, 
from July to December, the dolphins come into shallow 
water; you may almost say that they lie about on the 
shore. Usually they come in detachments of from three 
to four hundred, under the guidance of a few old males. 
The islanders are strangely lethargic over their fishing, 
considering that they are of Norwegian descent ; they 
sadly neglect their opportunities with the cod and other 
fish, and few of them will pursue the dolphin except when 
the work is thus made easy for them. Then bands of 
men armed with clubs, spears, or axes go down to the 
beach before daylight, and lie in wait behind the rocks 
till dawn, when the animals begin to come in to shore. 

At a signal whistle, every one springs out and lays 
about him vigorously. It is tame work, for the poor 
creatures are far too much surprised and terrified to offer 
resistance, and those that cannot flee are soon killed. 
Then the women and children come down and, with the 
men, haul the carcasses on to the higher ground where 
they cut them up. The "train-oil'" from them is taken 
away by the steamers that call periodically at Thorshavn. 
It may not be generally known that there are two or 
three species of fresh-water dolphins, by which I do not, 
of course, mean such as may sometimes swim up the 
rivers from the sea in search of food, or for other reason, 

268 




Dolphin Hunting 



A avourite hunting-ground or dolphins is on Stromo, one ot the Faroe Islands. 
Here, from July to December, they come into shallow water or lie about on the shore, 
and bands of men armed with axes and spears lie in wait for them behind the rocks. 



AND MANATEES 

but those which live wholly in fresh water. One of them, 
the Inia, inhabits the upper waters of the Amazon and 
some of the lakes round about ; its length varies from 
seven to twelve feet, and it differs little from the common 
dolphin except in having a longer and more pointed 
snout. The Indians and Bolivians pursue it for the sake 
of its flesh and its valuable oil. Before daybreak a small 
fleet of canoes will set off up the river and, hiding under 
the gloomy, overhanging trees, wait for the inia to come 
up to feed. As soon as one of them appears, two or 
three harpoons are launched at it, for only by swift kill- 
ing can the men hope to make a fairly good catch. The 
animals do not come in shoals ; seldom will there be more 
than a dozen in one place, and at the least noise these 
will dive, reappearing nobody knows where ; so the 
fishermen dare not use guns. All the harpoons thrown at 
one animal must come from the same boat, for he is not 
averse to doing a little towing, and though if he found 
three boat-loads moored to him he could not do them 
much harm, the noise he would make would alarm the 
other animals, and spoil the chances of the remaining 
boats. When a boat has killed her catch she paddles 
silently and rapidly away, towing the inia close behind, 
a man being stationed in the stern with a long lance to 
keep off the alligators that might try for a mouthful of 
the carcass. 

A very similar cetacean of the same size, called the 
Soosoo, is found in the Ganges, where it affords amusement 
to British sportsmen, and profit to such of the Hindus as 
take the trouble to hunt it. 

269 



DOLPHINS, PORPOISES 

The giant of the delphinidse, the grampus or gladiator 
dolphin, reaches a length of twenty and even five-and- 
twenty feet ; is one of the most voracious of the tribe, and 
is found in various of the northern seas, travelling in 
quite small herds. Such a herd will collect round a 
whale, and between them kill and eat it. Sometimes they 
vary their tactics ; surround the whale, hustle and bully 
it, drive it backwards and forwards for a whole day or 
more till it is dead beat, and then, between them, tear out 
and devour its tongue. The strength of the grampus is 
proverbial, and when a harpoon is fixed in it, it will make 
no difficulty of towing a boat-load of men for several 
miles before it is tired out. Many years ago a small 
grampus was seen in the Thames near Blackwall. Four 
men rowed after it and pierced it with three harpoons, 
and just when they thought their capture safe and their 
task finished, the powerful young beast started off full- 
speed up the river against a tide that was running eight 
miles an hour. After a couple of miles it dived, and then 
came to a dead stop, seemingly exhausted, and the oars- 
men pulled triumphantly towards it, expecting to find it 
dead ; but, as they came within about a fathom of it, the 
grampus suddenly shot away again, scarcely seeming to 
notice the pull of the boat when the rope had run taut 
again, and swam beyond Deptford — another three miles — 
before it would own itself conquered. A full-grown 
grampus would probably have towed thrice the number of 
men to Twickenham, and then been prepared to run them 
back again to Tilbury or Southend. 

Probably most readers have seen porpoises, if only at a 

270 



AND MANATEES 

distance, for big shoals of them frequently put in an 
appearance close to the shore : Hunstanton and the neigh- 
bourhood is a good place to see them. These animals 
bring out, as strongly as anything, the fisherman's rooted 
belief in the Infernal Powers as a creative force. " The 
Almighty never could ha 1 made sich varmints as them," 
observed a really saintly old salmon-fisher who was giving 
me an account of their depredations among the Nor- 
wegian salmon. And indeed the porpoise's appetite for 
these fish is so insatiable that it will pursue them up the 
rivers. For a small shoal to take a trip up the Seine as 
far as Rouen is a mere nothing ; it is a matter of history 
that they have been seen even beyond Paris. Nor is it 
only the salmon that appeals to their greed. Ask the 
herring and mackerel fleets their opinion anent the por- 
poise. It breaks up the shoals, rushes like a bull at a 
gate against a fleet of herring-nets, with disastrous results 
to the owners, and harries the mackerel literally to death. 
It is the smallest of the cetacean tribe ; one of them 
that measured five feet from tip to tail would be of 
average size. It has a dolphin-like body, though with 
rounder muzzle and head. A shoal of porpoises is like an 
immense black shiny patch on the water ; so closely do 
they crowd together and in such vast numbers, that it is 
difficult to understand how they can move at all. They 
exhibit all the love of playing and gambolling that is 
seen among the dolphins, and as much curiosity as a fish 
or an Arab ; hence perhaps some of the gruesome nurse- 
maid tales about the " sea-horses " that swim after and 
devour the unwary bather. 

271 



DOLPHINS, PORPOISES 

Though the animal is so valuable, there is little system- 
atic porpoise-hunting nowadays except among the Lapps 
and Greenlanders. If a whaleboat should happen to fall 
in with a shoal, it will harpoon as many of them as it can 
without going out of its way, and the Norwegian fisher- 
men will shoot or spear them in the same spirit in which 
a gamekeeper sends a charge of shot after a stray dog or 
a weasel. But in the Middle Ages porpoise-hunting was a 
fashionable sport in England and France : the meat was 
highly esteemed, and in Henry VIIFs time it was even a 
royal dish. The Greenlanders still eat and enjoy it ; 
they hunt it with light harpoons, and the catches are 
towed ashore in great quantities. 

The oil, which the Greenland fishers export to Central 
Europe, is obtained from the boiling down of the blubber, 
which, as in the whale, lies immediately below the skin. 
It is firmer than that of the whale, and usually about an 
inch deep, and the oil from it requires less treatment in 
the clarifying of it than any other form of cetacean fat. 
The hide when tanned is exceedingly tough, and is used 
largely in making hoods for carriages. 

The narwhal, or sea-unicorn as it is often called, has a 
dolphin's body, but its head is shaped more like that of a 
seal ; the blow-holes, as in the dolphin, have but one out- 
let. The chief feature which distinguishes it from all the 
other cetacea is its wonderful sword-like tusk, which in 
reality is an elongated tooth, sometimes more than half as 
long as its body (the tusk of the female is seldom more 
than ten inches long). Sea-unicorn, by the way, is rather 
a misleading nickname, for very frequently the animal 

272 



AND MANATEES 

has two of these ivory prolongations, the incisor tooth of 
the lower jaw being lengthened out so as to rival that 
of the upper. The animal may be found anywhere be- 
tween the shores of Iceland and Greenland. 

The terrific power of the formidable weapon with 
which it is provided may be gauged from the fact that 
the narwhal on seeing a ship will make a dash at it, 
thinking it to be some species of whale, and, if the vessel 
be of wood, will drive its tusk right through her side or 
stern. The result to the narwhal is not pleasant ; if it 
should succeed in piercing the side of the ship, the tusk 
will be snapped off by the force of her motion ; if the 
stern, the animal will become as much a fixture as a nail 
driven into a fence, and will be towed along and starved 
to death. From this it may be imagined how much 
chance a whale stands against a shoal of sea-unicorns. 
Yet, in spite of their fierceness, they play together as 
merrily as dolphins. 

The Icelanders use large, heavy rowing-boats in pursu- 
ing the narwhal. " Pursuing " is scarcely the right word 
in this case, because a boat might chase a narwhal till 
doomsday and never come up with it, for when the animal 
is alone its pace is something like that of a salmon. If, 
however, he should meet a friend, though fifty boats were 
after him he would still want to stop and fence with his 
tusk and play about for a while. 

But as a rule they swim in enormous shoals, making 

but little progress, fishing or playing in long irregular 

lines about the Iceland fjords. The fleet of boats — each 

with a crew of about five — lie in hiding among the rocks, 

s 273 



DOLPHINS, PORPOISES 

waiting for a shoal to come within reasonable distance of 
the shore ; and as soon as the long straggling lines are 
close enough, the boats dash from their hiding-place and 
glide swiftly and silently between the rows. 

Then all in a moment there is confusion and panic 
among the shoal ; for narwhals are only courageous against 
a passive foe, or one of their own kind ; and as the long 
oar-blades are whisked sharply out of the water and 
everything is made clear for action, they fall back one 
upon another, make one futile attempt at flight, and then 
content themselves with huddling together and spouting 
or groaning. In this position they are powerless to defend 
themselves, even if they would, for the long tusks have 
become hopelessly mixed ; sometimes half a dozen will be 
thrust together like so much trellis-work, and not one of 
the owners can stir. Perhaps one of the more daring of 
the males will make a feeble dash at the boat, but there 
is always a fisherman ready to receive him. 

The fishing tackle is a pole, eight or ten feet long, with 
either an ordinary whale-harpoon head fitted to it or else 
a three-tined fork with barbed points. These the sturdy 
boatmen work untiringly, stabbing on all sides as far as 
they can reach, pitchforking the smaller carcasses on 
board bodily, and leaving the others to take care of them- 
selves till they can be roped up together and towed ashore. 

Although they see their brethren being butchered on 
all sides of them, the narwhals still make no attempt at 
escape ; some few perhaps will dive, but when they want 
breath they generally seem to come up again in the midst 
of one of the lines of struggling animals. 

274 



AND MANATEES 

The work is often lucrative enough ; but, as is always 
the case with the more profitable forms of fishing, very 
risky and uncertain. Sometimes, in the very heat of the 
slaughter, one of the men will discover that the boat is 
leaking ; it has been punctured by one of the ivory swords 
round it, which, driven accidentally and with but little 
force against the timbers, has succeeded in making a hole 
but not in staying there to stop it up. Hastily the few 
carcasses taken on board are pushed out of the way and 
attempts made at checking the leak. This however is 
idle, for, by the time the men have discovered and stopped 
one hole, they have realised that the water is still coming- 
in from other holes and that the boat must now surely 
sink. With their heavy nailed boots, and their already 
sodden woollen leggings, swimming will be impossible ; 
and unless another boat can get at the sinking crew, there 
is not much hope for them. And a boat may be ever so 
near, yet powerless to help ; for the very thickness of the 
shoal, which under ordinary circumstances would mean 
wealth to the fishermen, is now a horrible obstacle, 
effectually preventing the progress of another boat 
towards the unfortunates. Cases have been known of 
a crew being drowned or gored to death by the terrified 
narwhals while another boat was within a few fathoms of 
them. 

The modern Icelanders have ceased to regard the tusks 
as merely useful as arrows, tent-poles, and charms ; instead 
they export them, and get a very high price for them ; 
for narwhal ivory is harder, and will bear a higher polish, 
than even that obtained from the elephant. All kinds of 

275 



DOLPHINS, PORPOISES 

superstitions circled round this tooth or tusk in ancient 
and mediaeval days, the chief among them being that it 
was an antidote against all poisons. Even as far down as 
the sixteenth century we find Charles IX of France be- 
lieving that a fragment of the tooth put into his wine- 
cup would counteract the effect of any poison that an 
enemy might have placed there. Later all sorts of 
squabbles arose among naturalists as to the use that the 
tusk is to the animal ; some still maintain that it is 
employed solely in burrowing for molluscs which, with 
skate, cod, and squid, are its food ; and that its having 
been found in a dead whale or a ship^ timbers is pure 
accident. 

The Icelanders strip off the hide and employ it in 
various ways, and export the oil from the fat ; this is 
said to be of better quality than that from whale- 
blubber. But they do not eat the flesh. The word 
" nar " in Icelandic signifies a corpse ; and the natives 
argue that an animal does not get called " corpse- whale " 
for nothing ; and they abstain. In that respect they are a 
good deal more particular than some more civilised folk 
who will enjoy crabs and eels which undoubtedly have a 
partiality for the form of diet which the narwhal is un- 
justly accused of relishing. 

As the weather gets warmer the shoals swim north- 
wards to the Greenland coast, sometimes in the straggling 
files already described, sometimes " shoulder to shoulder," 
in one line a couple of miles long. They stay here till 
driven southwards by scarcity of food, but often a small 
shoal will be cut off by the sudden winter and frozen up. 

276 



AND MANATEES 

Then a special use of the long tusk is made apparent ; as 
the animals cannot remain under water altogether, they 
charge upwards at the ice, and gradually succeed in 
breaking open a breathing-hole, which they keep free 
from the continually re-forming ice. It is at these holes 
that the Greenlanders find their narwhal fishing-grounds ; 
sometimes they are numerous, sometimes there will be 
only one in a space of several square miles. 

The fishermen collect in great numbers round the hole, 
every one armed with either a gun or a three-pronged 
fork, and before they have been waiting long the suffocat- 
ing animals appear in hundreds. The "catching 1 ' is 
wholesale massacre ; the men with the guns fire as fast 
as they can, while the harpooners drive their weapons 
into the dead or dying bodies and pitchfork them into 
heaps on the ice. 

The Greenland men have none of the Icelanders' 
scruples about eating the narwhal ; in fact, they regard 
the flesh as a great delicacy. They cut up the 
carcass into joints, which they smoke as we should 
smoke bacon. 

Before we proceed to the vegetable-eating delphinidse, 
there are two other animals we must notice — the Caaing 
Whale and the Beluga, or white whale, both of them 
ardently pursued by the northern fishermen. The caaing, 
which the Scotch fishers call the black whale, used invari- 
ably to be classed by naturalists with the dolphins, but it 
is now generally regarded as a separate cetacean species. 
Sailors often call it the howling-whale and the pilot-fish, 
though why the latter it is difficult to say, unless on 

277 



DOLPHINS, PORPOISES 

account of its collecting, dolphin fashion, and swimming 
in shoals after the ships. In shape it is more like a very 
long and very fat porpoise than anything else ; it is about 
the same length as the grampus, but the thickest part of 
its body sometimes measures eleven feet through, so that 
the animal would touch the ends, sides, ceiling, and floor 
of a fairly long corridor. Its colour is glossy black, 
with a white streak running the whole length of its under 
side. 

The Orkney whalers make good profit of this animal, 
for it is easily taken, and relatively almost as valuable as 
the whale itself. It is no friend to the Scotch cod- 
fishers, for it eats the catch and sometimes runs off with 
the tackle. The pursuit and destruction of it must 
usually be regarded more as a branch of other sea trades 
than as a separate fishery. 

This is not so with the " Greenlander's Whale," as the 
beluga is sometimes styled. This animal seems to be a 
sort of link between the caaing and the narwhal, and its 
home is nearly the same as that of the former ; that is to 
say it belongs to the Greenland coast, but travels as far 
south as the Faroe Islands, and in America is found as 
low down as Newfoundland. Very occasionally it comes 
down to our own coasts ; about sixty years ago one of 
them was captured some distance up the Medway, and one 
was killed on the Scotch coast in 1815. 

In length it is seldom more than fifteen feet ; it has a 
broad, blunt head and no tusk, though it has about 
seventeen front teeth, which generally fall out as the 
beluga passes middle life. Its skin is quite white, 

278 



AND MANATEES 

and so soft that only a well-embedded harpoon will 
retain its position. Yet, strangely enough, this skin, 
so soft while fresh, makes the toughest of leather 
when tanned. 

The Greenlanders kill thousands of belugas every 
summer, and in winter the animals are caught in the nar- 
whal ice-holes, at least half a dozen of them finding their 
way to every hole. They are either very stupid or else 
very timid and gentle, for they flee at lightning speed if 
they know themselves to be pursued ; they seldom offer 
any resistance to the harpooners, and are rarely seen 
attempting to attack any other animal, although, like the 
caaing, they have no objection to snapping up a hooked 
cod-fish or ling. Shoals of them are seldom seen near the 
coast, generally they remain in deep water or hang about 
the entries of the fjords in wait for the salmon. The 
little ones and the females are, as a rule, placed in the 
middle of the shoal. The young are born black, then 
become pink and eventually white. The name Sea- 
canaries has often been given to them because when they 
are under water their bellowing is deadened to a peculiar 
bird-like whistle. 

The beluga enjoys the distinction of being the only 
cetacean for which nets are set. At the mouths of 
the fjords a kind of salmon-trap on a large scale is 
moored, and a day seldom passes without several being- 
caught. The Danish Greenlanders go farther than thL 
and make some very respectable catches with the seine. 
Its meshes are made of fine rope, each opening five or six 
inches square, and the net is shot either from a couple of 

279 



DOLPHINS, PORPOISES 

cutters or from lugger-rigged rowing boats. The oil is 
sent south by Danish steamers, and the flesh is smoked for 
eating, like that of the narwhal. 

Some of the cetacea do not live in the sea altogether, 
and some are vegetarians. There is a class which spends 
much of its time in the rivers and is known by the generic 
name manatidce, the two best-known specimens of which 
are the dugong and the manatee ; one or two species of 
this class have become extinct during the last couple of 
hundred years — notably the Rhytina, on which Behring's 
shipwrecked crew lived for eleven months in their island 
solitude, a hundred and fifty years ago. 

The dugong fishery is, among civilised people, quite a 
modern industry, that has arisen on account of the 
animal's oil, which, it was discovered some years ago, 
contains all the strengthening medicinal properties of 
cod-liver oil. Its home is round Polynesia, the East 
Indies, and Ceylon, and boat-loads of harpooned carcasses 
are taken ashore by Dutch and Australian fishermen. 
Many are killed in the river mouths and even on the sea- 
shore, for the flippers of the manatidae enable the animals 
to drag themselves along the ground. 

All these creatures are singularly mild and gentle in 
their disposition, and maternal affection is even more 
strongly shown by them than by other cetaceans. There- 
fore the young ones are always aimed at by the 
harpooners, and the mothers, instantly interposing 
themselves between the young and the enemy, are easily 
speared. A brutal practice obtains among the Malay 

280 



AND MANATEES 

fishermen of harpooning a couple of baby dugongs and 
towing them along as a decoy ; the mothers follow and 
become easy game. This may be good business but it 
" isn't cricket." 

The manatees, or sea-cows, or femmes poissons, show 
just the same tenderness and, in addition, a peculiar 
clannishness. In great herds they often leave the sea and 
enter the rivers of Central and South America ; a few old 
males go first, then the bulk of the herd, wives and 
children in the middle. If a harpoon should suddenly 
dart out on them, the males try to cover the retreat of 
the females, and if one of either sex be harpooned the 
rest will gather round the wounded animal and try to set 
it free. 

But the greater part of the manatee-hunting is done 
higher up the rivers. Here the animals may be seen 
lying about on the weedy, muddy banks, feeding as peace- 
fully as cows ; yet the Indian fishermen know that this is 
no place to take them, for at the first unnatural sound or 
unusual sight they disappear. The harpooner must there- 
fore decide upon one of three courses ; either hiding in 
the weeds on the bank, at the risk of being eaten by 
alligators, and waiting for the chance of the manatee's 
coming up to breathe ; or walking boldly along the bank 
and launching a spear at the " cow " when it is sleeping ; 
or thirdly, setting off before daylight in a canoe and 
catching the animals oft' their guard when they come up 
unsuspectingly to feed at dawn. The second method is 
more satisfactory and less precarious than it sounds ; for 
the manatee must sleep sometimes, and does not neces- 

281 



DOLPHINS, PORPOISES 

sarily choose the night for the purpose. When sleeping 
he always floats along with the current, his muzzle above 
water, and so is an easy target for the skilled harpoon- 
thrower. But by such means these valuable creatures are 
only caught one at a time, and the aim of the hunters is 
to make a " bag " ; therefore they prefer to surprise a 
whole herd. 

Manatee-hunting is just the reverse of inia-harpooning ; 
the latter, we have seen, must be done suddenly and 
swiftly, before the capture of one of the animals has 
frightened the rest away ; whereas if one manatee of a 
herd be struck, the rest appear in a moment. As soon 
as the blood of one of them begins to flow, the others take 
it as a signal that one of their kinsfolk is in trouble, and 
flock round him, affording one of the most pathetic sights 
in nature ; all the herd moaning and crying, some trying 
to drag out the harpoon, others seizing the line in their 
teeth and endeavouring to bite it through. On such an 
occasion the whole herd is entirely at the mercy of the 
hunters, for the unwounded animals may be relied upon 
not to leave their brothers to their fate. 

The flesh is rich and tasty ; some people say it re- 
sembles beef, others that they would not know it from 
pork. An important characteristic is that it will keep 
firm and sweet for a long while ; no small advantage when 
we bear in mind that the manatee^ favourite home is 
round about the equator, j The leather of the tanned 
hide is exceedingly durable, and is now becoming costly in 
Europe. 

The Indian harpooners still believe many of the quaint 

282 



AND MANATEES 

stories about this creature, which their fathers told to the 
early sixteenth-century European explorers ; especially 
the superstition that if it finds a corpse it piously watches 
over it till someone comes to bury it, or till it sinks in 
the water. 



283 



CHAPTER XXII 
TURTLES AND TURTLE-CATCHING 

Turtles and tortoises— The terrapin or snapper— Catching turtles with 
fish— The remora — Shooting with tethered arrows — Turtle-diving 
— Tortoise-shell — A horrible method of obtaining it — The hawk's- 
bill— Its shell— Seining for turtles in South America— The Gala- 
pagos tortoise— The green turtle— Methods of taking him. 

ALTHOUGH turtles and tortoises cannot be called 
fish, some account of the catching of them must 
find a place in a book on fisheries, unless the word 
is taken in its narrowest sense. 

We have seen that when men go fishing it is either to 
provide food for themselves and others, or else to procure 
some substance which, though not eatable, is valuable as 
an article of commerce. Sometimes the prey they seek 
fulfils both purposes, as in the case of the sturgeon ; and 
just as from that fish the fisherman gets food plus isin- 
glass, so from the turtle he gets food plus tortoise-shell. 
Of the tortoise proper we shall not have much to say, 
except in the case of a larger variety ; for, in addition to 
its generally being a land animal, its shell is seldom of 
great value, and only the flesh of special kinds is eaten. 
It was one of the " unclean " animals which Moses forbade 
the Israelites to eat, and judging by the smaller species, 
one can conceive that they were seldom tempted to break 

284 



TURTLES AND TURTLE-CATCHING 

the levitical law in this respect ; for where the meat of 
these creatures is concerned, there is no medium between 
excellent and disgusting. 

It is not easy to draw a sharp dividing line between 
turtles and tortoises, for their charactertistics frequently 
overlap ; one cannot say that the tortoise belongs to the 
land, and the turtle to the water, for there are land turtles 
and water tortoises, just as there are inedible turtles and 
edible tortoises. A generally accepted method of classifi- 
cation is to divide the genus testudinata, to which both 
belong, into four species : marine, land, river, and marsh ; 
but for the present purpose it will be sufficient to say that 
turtles have their limbs lengthened and curved backwards 
so as to serve as fins or flippers which they can use when 
swimming, whereas tortoises have not this feature, and 
though some can live in the water they are generally 
stationary while there, making little pretence at doing 
anything but drinking. 

The characteristics which are common to both are the 
short, puffy body encased in a shell which is made up of 
two shields, an upper and a lower, cemented together at 
their margins. The shell is really an orderly arrange- 
ment of hard plates covering everything but the head, 
tail, and legs which usually are encased in a tough, scaly 
skin. Both animals breathe by means of lungs. Those 
that pass their lives on land live entirely on vegetable 
diet, while the others frequently make the smaller molluscs 
an article of their food. It is said that both can go for 
months without nourishment of any sort. 

The marine turtles are to be found anywhere in the 

285 



TURTLES AND TURTLE-CATCHING 

tropical and sub-tropical regions, and sometimes even in 
colder latitudes. Their weight and size are very variable ; 
some of them turn the scale at seven hundredweight. 
The age which they reach is still a much-disputed point ; 
but satisfactory proof has been given that some have lived 
for eighty years. 

Generally speaking the turtle is quiet and inoffensive ; 
too well protected by Nature for it to have many enemies, 
and too stupid and sluggish to offer violence. There is an 
exception where the alligator-terrapin is concerned ; this, 
known also as the snapper, is a fresh- water turtle found in 
the pools east of the Rocky Mountains and in certain 
parts of South America. It has a tail like that of the 
crocodile, and is an implacable opponent of all other 
reptiles, spending half its time in slaughtering young 
alligators. More power to that turtle ! Unluckily it is 
not only one of the eatable sort, but its flesh is more 
highly prized for the table than that of any other of its 
kind ; and therefore it is hunted down without mercy, 
thus benefiting the few, when, if left alone, it would be 
an advantage to the many. 

The smaller terrapins, too, the red-bellied and the 
vellow-bellied, caught respectively in Virginia and Florida, 
are also much valued as delicacies, as is also the salt- 
water terrapin of Florida and the Gulf of Mexico. Large 
fresh-water turtles, three feet long, are taken from the 
Ganges, Yang-tse-Kiang, Nile, and other great rivers, and 
are largely eaten by the natives. 

How to catch and kill animals so well shielded natur- 
ally, is a problem which both savage and civilised hunters 

286 



TURTLES AND TURTLE CATCHING 

have tried every means of solving. A bullet is effective, 
if of the right sort and fired at the right spot ; and many 
Englishmen who have tried turtle-shooting in the Indian 
Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico speak highly of the sport. 
But men killed turtles long before guns were heard of. 
How ? 

In his progress towards civilisation man adapts quite as 
often as he invents; and just as the fisherman made use of 
the wind as a means of propulsion for his boat, centuries 
before engine-building was ever thought of, so he pressed 
the cormorant or the gull or other animals into his 
service, often before more artificial means had occurred 
to him. Some of these " adaptations," as we know, survive 
to this day, and among them the using of a fish as a 
turtle-catcher. There is a curious little creature called 
the remora or sucking-fish, found in the Mediterranean, 
the tropics, and sometimes as far north as our own coa: ' 
Its special characteristic is an elongated disc which cover 
its head and extends over part of its body, and by meai; 
of this it can fix itself firmly to any object by suction. 
From the remora's habit of clinging to other fish or to 
the bottoms of boats, it soon suggested itself as an 
excellent turtle-catcher, for only very great force or care- 
ful leverage can dislodge it when it has once fastened 
itself on to anything ; and to this use it is still put in 
certain parts of the Mediterranean. 

When such fish happen to be netted they are at once 
placed in pots of water and carefully fed and looked after 
by the fishermen ; a tight-fitting ring is fixed round the 
slender part of the body just above the tail, to which a 

287 



TURTLES AND TURTLE-CATCHING 

cord can be tied at need, and then the turtle-catcher is 
ready for action. 

When a hunt is about to take place the men carry a 
few of the fish on board the boat in their pots, and row 
off in pursuit of the first turtle they see. If the turtle 
should happen to be asleep, as often happens in deep 
water, a noose is slipped over his neck and he is killed by 
a few blows on the head. If he be awake and swimming 
with his back to the boat he will still be easy game, for 
if he be not actually deaf as most fishermen assert, he is 
at best very dull and slow-witted, and will often allow 
the men to come within hitting distance before he 
attempts to escape. 

He may happen, however, to turn suddenly, catch sight 
of the boat and swim calmly off in another direction. 
Now is the remora's chance, and everything depends on 
how it will behave itself. As soon as the boat is within 
a few fathoms one of the men throws a tethered fish ; all 
things being favourable it lights on some part of the 
turtle's anatomy, clings with forty-leech power, and is only 
to be removed with a slip of wood or metal when the turtle 
has been comfortably hauled in and made fast alongside. 

But often things do not go so well ; the man misses his 
aim, perhaps, or the turtle happens to dive just as the 
fish is thrown. Then the remora is not so teachable as 
the cormorant, and it may absolutely refuse to stick at 
all ; and the exasperated fishermen may see the turtle 
swim blissfully off while the fish goes the opposite way. 
Perhaps it will be drawn up clinging tightly to a bit of 
sodden drift-wood; or it may choose to dive under the 

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TURTLES AND TURTLE-CATCHING 

boat and take up a position on the keel whence nothing 
can dislodge it, and where it will probably be crushed 
when the boat is beached. 

The South American Indians, in hunting the fresh- 
water turtle, still use sometimes the tethered arrow, 
which is supplied with a movable point ; some account 
of a similar weapon has been given in Chapter XVII, 
and a brief description of it will suffice. The harpoon 
or arrow, which is shot from a short but powerful bow, 
has an iron head, the base of which fits into a wooden 
peg, the other end of which is inserted in a hollow at the 
tip of the shaft. A long coil of stout twine is wound 
round the arrow, one of its ends fastened to the shaft, 
the other to the point. The immense strength of the bow 
causes the arrow-head to pierce the tough shell, and the 
shock of the concussion liberates the shaft ; the string — 
forty yards of it — rapidly uncSils itself and, whether the 
turtle dives, sinks, or swims away, the shaft is left float- 
ing. Men are waiting in their canoes and, the moment a 
turtle is hit, one of them seizes the stick and proceeds to 
tow the animal ashore, where, if it is not already killed, a 
blow with a cudgel soon puts an end to it. 

But since tortoise-shell has so greatly increased in 
value, methods injurious to the shell are seldom used 
except by sportsmen, and wherever we look nowadays we 
shall generally see the fishermen trying to take the 
creature alive, and this may be done in various ways. In 
the Indian Ocean and the Dutch East Indies, whence 
some of the finest tortoise-shell is exported, the islanders 
still follow a plan that is at least a couple of hundred 

T 28Q 



TURTLES AND TURTLE-CATCHING 

years old. Putting out to sea in stout-built sailing 
canoes, the crews seek a favourable spot for their work 
(and such a spot is not easily decided upon, for some of 
the best turtles go sometimes hundreds of miles out to 
sea), and when this is found, slow down and watch for the 
first prize that appears. 

On board each boat, in addition to the crew, are several 
expert swimmers or divers. One at a time these stand up 
in the bow, and at sight of a turtle one of them springs 
overboard after it, and then the sport begins. Some- 
times a dozen men from the same boat will be occupied 
with a dozen turtles. On reaching one of the reptiles 
the diver swings himself on to its back and sits with his 
legs tucked under him, thus throwing out as little shark- 
bait as possible, and gripping with both hands the edge 
of the shell above the neck. The frightened turtle 
plunges forward or dives, the fisherman still acting the 
part of Old Man of the Sea, and, whenever it is possible, 
trying to guide the clumsy movements towards the boat. 
Everybody, unless prevented by total immersion, is shout- 
ing at the top of his voice in the hope that the noise may 
drive off any sharks that may be in the vicinity, and some 
of the crew stand by with guns to put an end to any such 
interloper. 

At last the turtle is exhausted, the boat steers towards 
the diver, who, as soon as a rope is thrown to him, loops 
it round the neck of his capture, and when he has seen it 
towed safely alongside, dashes off towards the next turtle 
that shows itself. 

Sometimes one of these fellows, in spite of all precau- 

290 




TUKTLE-FlSHIXG 



On reaching the turtles the divers swing themselves on to their backs, and sit with 
legs tucked under them, throwing out as little shark-bait as possible. 



TURTLES AND TURTLE-CATCHING 

tions, does get snapped up by a shark. In the case of the 
divers in some localities one does not hesitate to say, 
" Serve him right," for their abominable method of 
obtaining tortoise-shell from the hawk's-bill turtle is a dis- 
grace to mankind. Some inhuman wretch once discovered 
that shell taken from the living animal is more easily 
treated, and may be a little more valuable than that from 
a dead one, and so devised a means of effecting this 
atrocious purpose, which is still in use in certain islands of 
the Indian Ocean. 

The turtle is suspended over a slow fire, or, in some 
cases, is tied down and covered with smouldering char- 
coal, till the upper shell begins to curl outwards ; then 
this is torn off the body with knives, so that while still 
hot it can be pressed flat between two boards. The 
wretched creature thus not only tortured needlessly but 
left for a time with no protection against possible 
enemies, is turned loose into the sea again. This is 
simply piling brutality on brutality, for though the shell 
gradually forms again, it is thin and of poor quality and 
practically valueless. The infliction of some pain is 
almost unavoidable in any form of fishing ; but that 
there should be civilised buyers who are willing to profit 
by such loathsome acts towards a defenceless creature is 
a disgraceful fact. The turning loose of the turtle after 
this brutal operation is a comparatively modern practice. 
At one time it used to be killed when the shell had been 
removed, and eaten ; but the march of civilisation has 
taught the islanders that the flesh of the hawkVbill is 
flavourless and unpalatable. 

291 



TURTLES AND TURTLE-CATCHING 

The Javanese and the islanders of Keeling and the 
Celebes still eat this turtle, and are content to kill it 
before removing the shell. They most often hunt it in 
shallow water, either from canoes or by wading ; the 
turtles are brought ashore, killed by blows, and then 
immersed in boiling water till the plates are loosened. 

The hawkVbill is scarcely one of the giants, for it 
rarely weighs more than about two hundred pounds. 
Although, as we have said, its flesh is hardly eatable, it 
produces the best tortoise-shell in the world ; it may be 
found throughout the Indian Ocean and in the tropical 
parts of the Atlantic and Pacific, some of the finest 
coming from New Guinea. The head is of a curious 
bird-like shape, whence its name. 

The carapace, or upper shell, of this turtle is made 
up of thirteen plates arranged in three longitudinal rows, 
five in the middle and four on either side, the largest 
of which would weigh about half a pound and measure 
thirteen inches by eight. These are the valuable portions 
of the shell. In addition the animal has twenty-four 
"hoofs" or small plates, which form the serrated margin 
round the carapace ; but these, like the under shell, are 
of comparatively little value. 

Another way of catching the turtle alive is by means 
of a kind of seine-net ; this is the method that, among 
the Gauchos and South American Indians, has almost 
entirely superseded the old one of shooting or harpooning. 
Generally it is only employed for the capture of the fresh- 
water species, but it may sometimes be seen in use among 
the negroes of the Bahamas, who work it from the seashore. 

292 



TURTLES AND TURTLE-CATCHING 

The South Americans employ a seine long enough to 
reach almost from one side of a narrow pool to the other. 
The bunt is unusually deep and often has a tow-rope 
to it, so that it may be used exactly like the tuck-seine 
of the pilchard-fishers ; i.e. both perpendicularly and hori- 
zontally. It is corked above, and lightly weighted below. 

With the exception of two, all the hunters stretch 
themselves round the pool as far as possible, getting as 
close to the water's edge as the marshy banks will allow ; 
and with sticks or poles beat the tufts of grass and rushes 
in order to frighten any of the turtles that may be 
lurking there into open water. Meanwhile the two other 
men have each got into a canoe, carrying the seine 
between them to one end of the pool and there shooting 
it, the canoes gradually separating till the net is fully 
extended, the bunt-line — if used — being joined to a 
longer one which is thrown ashore. As soon as the net 
is in readiness the knocking and howling on the banks 
is increased, and goes on for perhaps two or three hours, 
the canoemen meanwhile paddling as gently as possible, 
a stroke now and a stroke then, towards the far end of 
the pool. As the net becomes nearly full they pull more 
sharply, and when at last they can no longer stir it they 
throw the tow-rope to their mates on the banks, leap 
to land, and all pull together, drawing the net into bag- 
form and pulling it high and dry. I have heard that 
oxen are sometimes used for the towing, but cannot say 
how far this is true. 

Now everybody gathers round the opening of the net, 
which is disposed in such a manner that only one or two 

293 



TURTLES AND TURTLE-CATCHING 

turtles at a time can escape, and these, as they come out, 
are clubbed on the head. Though the mesh is a very 
large one, valuable fish are not infrequently caught with 
the turtles ; sometimes a good-sized alligator is also swept 
in, and extinguished with a bullet or cudgel before it can 
make itself in any ways objectionable. 

The land tortoises of the Galapagos Archipelago, 
although they are not fished for, should have a passing 
mention. These spend the greater part of their time 
away from the water, but visit the streams and pools 
periodically, staying there about three days at a time. 
They are so large that it would take six or eight men to 
lift one of them, and anyone who likes can sit on the 
back of one and ride at a speed averaging six yards per 
minute, or a mile in five hours. On being approached 
they draw in head and limbs and drop with a loud clatter 
and a good deal of hissing ; but all that the rider has to 
do is to take his seat and give a few light blows on the 
hinder end of the shell ; then the legs come out again 
and the vehicle moves on. 

These reptiles are of great value in more ways than 
one. The eggs, which are spherical, white, and rather 
larger than those of a hen, are laid in the sand and care- 
fully covered, and the natives take them for food when- 
ever they can. Some of the animals yield as much as two 
hundred pounds of solid meat, which is either eaten fresh 
or is salted and dried for export. The fat is rendered 
down into a thin oil which now commands a high price. 
Unless the tortoise is really fat the natives do not kill it. 
Its condition is ascertained by a small slit being made in 

294 



TURTLES AND TURTLE-CATCHING 

the skin near the tail, and if the fat is not then found to 
be thick enough, the tortoise is set free again. 

Strangers in the parts frequented by the Galapagos 
tortoise have, in days gone by, been very much surprised 
to find well-beaten, path- like tracks leading to and from 
the springs and streams ; these have been made by the 
tortoises in their periodical pilgrimages in search of water. 
On reaching a pool or river they take in a "sea-stock" 
or earners supply of water, which will last them till the 
next visit ; and thirsty travellers on meeting the animal 
have often saved their lives by killing it, just as desert 
wanderers are sometimes reduced to slaughtering a 
camel. 

The most popularly known of all the turtles is that 
from which the soup is made, the green turtle, whose 
home is all over the warm quarters of the world, though 
it is supposed to have been found originally off' Ascension 
Island ; it abounds in the West Indies and is often taken 
on the high seas, hundreds of miles away from anywhere. 
Its flesh is a very profitable article of commerce and its 
eggs are highly prized for their richness. It is the largest 
of its kind, often weighing six hundred pounds and reach- 
ing a length of six feet or more. 

While it remains in the water the West Indian negroes 
dive after it in the manner already described ; but it is 
often found on the beach strolling about in great numbers, 
and it then forms an easy if ponderous capture. The 
hunters surround a small group of them, cutting off all 
retreat to the water's edge, and then, with a batch of men 
to each turtle, turn them over on their backs. This is not 

295 



TURTLES AND TURTLE-CATCHING 

as easy as it sounds ; figures are deceptive, but if we bear 
in mind that a green turtle is somewhere about the size 
and weight of a grand piano, we shall not only appre- 
ciate the difficulty of the men's task, but shall hear with- 
out wonder that when it is once on its back the huge mass 
can never right itself again and is easily killed. This, 
however, is not an invariable rule among the testudinata, 
for the Galapagos tortoise, which sometimes weighs more 
than the green turtle, is more agile, and makes no trouble 
of getting back on its legs when it has been turned over. 



296 



CHAPTER XXIII 

AFTER THE SEAL AND THE 
WALRUS 

The pinnipeds — The seals and their young — Seal-hunting among the 
Eskimos — The seal as a fighter— The Eskimos' summer season — 
Varieties of seals— Sealing among civilised fleets — Methods — 
Dangers of the work — A seal-massacre — How the seal-colonies 
are founded — Sea-elephants, sea-lions, and sea-bears — The walrus 
— His enemies — A big catch — Modern methods of walrus-hunting. 

THE pinnipeds or fin-footed animals, under which 
head are included seals, sea-lions and walruses, are 
even less like fish than are the cetacea, for they 
possess four legs — or members which serve as such ; they 
are generally regarded as the link between the land and 
the water mammals ; but as they spend a good part of 
their lives in the water, and are shot or clubbed or har- 
pooned for the sake of their skin, fat, etc., we shall devote 
a chapter to these remarkable animals. 

A whole book might easily be written about the charac- 
teristics and uses of the seal, for its many peculiarities 
seem to render it a thing apart from the rest of the 
animal kingdom. It is born on land, and is even obliged 
to learn to swim before it can trust itself in deep water. 
Its land movements are certainly neither swift nor grace- 
ful, for its funny little feet are hampered by their webs, 

297 



AFTER THE SEAL 

and so its motions are carried on mainly by the muscles of 
the body, with the result that its " walking " is merely a 
series of awkward, shuffling hops ; and practically the 
only use its limbs are to it when not in the water, is as a 
means of climbing rocks, ice, or a sloping beach. Once in 
the water, however, few fish could be more swift and un- 
tiring than they. 

Over their little ones learning to swim, many curious 
stories — some of doubtful truth — have been told. Close 
observers say that the young are never driven into the water 
by their parents ; they maintain that these have little or 
nothing to do with the swimming lessons, for the little 
ones teach themselves. Those that lie nearest the water's 
edge set the example to the rest by wriggling into the sea 
and splashing about in an astonished, half-frightened 
manner ; when their heads go under they struggle up- 
wards again, crawl on to the beach, and go to sleep. On 
waking, they return to their task ; the same thing happens 
over and over again ; dip, ducking, nap — always the nap 
— until the neophyte has become a proficient swimmer. 

Among the seals we shall not see that touching affection 
of the mothers for the young that we witnessed with the 
cetaceans. The fathers, or bull-seals, do indeed protect 
the babies as long as they remain under their eye, but 
if a little one choose to wander away from its home, no 
effort will be made on the part of either parent to protect 
it or bring it back. 

Seals are by no means confined to the northern regions, 
though they are perhaps more at home there than else- 
where. Both the seal and the whale are often erroneously 

298 



AND THE WALRUS 

supposed to cling entirely to the Arctic regions ; but 
there are few non-tropical quarters where some pinniped 
or other may not be found. On the northern coasts of 
the British Isles they are plentiful enough; they have 
often been seen in numbers off the Norfolk coast even ; 
and in inland seas like the Caspian or Lake Baikal, 
thousands of them are to be found. River estuaries and 
narrow channels are their favourite resorts, because here 
the fish on which they feed are less scattered about and 
more easily obtained. For their land residence, some 
choose sandy beaches, well sheltered from high winds ; 
some go to the other extreme and prefer a rocky, un- 
protected shore. In fine weather they are content to lie 
about on the beach or rocks and doze ; but when the 
weather is rough they will scamper about and play like 
children. 

Among the Eskimos, sealing is almost as old as the 
people themselves ; one can no more dissociate the Eskimo 
and the seal than one can think of the Irish peasant 
without his pig ; there is scarcely an inch of the animal 
that these clever Arctic folk do not utilise. The flesh is 
tough and not sweet-smelling, yet they eat and enjoy it ; 
they make soup of the blood, and drink such of the oil 
as they do not use for heating and lighting. The skin 
is, of course, made into clothes or used to cover their 
kayaks and tents ; the tendons become bow-strings, sew- 
ing cotton and cord, and the tissues, dried and stretched, 
admit a certain amount of light when fastened over the 
opening of the hut. 

The Eskimo has various methods of obtaining the 

299 



AFTER THE SEAL 

animal that, when dead, serves him in so many capacities. 
Often he harpoons it as he does the narwhal, in ice-holes ; 
with this difference, that he, and not the hunted animal, 
makes the hole. In winter time many thousands of seals 
get "iced up, 1 ' just as the dolphins do; but they must 
come up to breathe from time to time, although they 
close their nostrils when they plunge, and though there 
is a very long interval between any two respirations. 
Therefore the holes which the fishermen make in the ice 
are just so many seal- traps, and all that the men have 
to do is to stand round the hole and spear each luckless 
creature as it comes to the surface of the water, drag out 
the carcass, and take it home. 

When the frost begins to break up, the seals struggle 
out of the water and begin to jump about on the ice or 
the rocks. Then the Eskimos vary their methods of 
hunting. A band of them, armed with clubs, spears, or 
axes, watch the movements of a flock of seals and gradu- 
ally manage to cut it off from all return to the sea ; then 
spread themselves round it and gradually close in. A seal 
looks such an innocent, gentle beast when you see it 
amusing itself at the Zoological Gardens or Brighton 
Aquarium ; its merry, yet pathetic, eyes look as though 
they belonged to an animal that could offer no resistance to 
any persecutor, human or other ; but sealers tell a different 
tale. True, it will not actually pursue a man beyond the 
limits of what it regards as its own ground ; but in order 
to escape to the water when death is otherwise imminent, 
it will make as good a fight of it as any other animal. 
A bulldog is a small thing, but we do not care to be 

300 




5f/ 



An Eskimo Method of Seat.-Fishing 

The Eskimo has various methods of obtaining the seal ; often he harpoons 
it through ice-holes. 



AND THE WALRUS 

bitten by one, and a seal's bite is rather worse than that 
of a bulldog, and a seal has the same affectionate way of 
clinging to anything that happens to come between its 
teeth. Its nails, too, are not to be lightly considered, 
seeing that with them it can tear a large cod piecemeal. 

When the prisoners see that there is no escape, their 
first instinct is to huddle together as closely as possible ; 
this is the hunter's safeguard, for if that instinct bade 
the animals open out and make a concerted attack, they 
could soon tear a small body of their would-be slayers to 
pieces. 

Gradually the circle closes in, and the outer rank of 
seals, howling with rage and fear, spring up on their hind- 
quarters and prepare to do battle. The springing up is 
rather like the bending of the salmon or the dolphin, for 
it is done by means of the backbone, which is so flexible 
that the animals can bend themselves almost at a right- 
angle, the upper part of the body being kept perpen- 
dicular while the lower remains horizontal. 

If you want to kill a seal quickly, hit him on the nose 
with a stout stick — if he will let you get near enough to 
him. One would naturally suppose that a long spear 
would be most effective ; but the seal is far from being a 
fool ; in nine cases out of ten he will be sharp enough to 
seize the shaft between his teeth, and even if he do not 
snap it, there is no getting it away from him ; moreover, a 
spear-point would have to be driven very deeply to do 
him much harm. Often the Eskimos find that the best 
plan is to let the animal occupy himself with a pole or 
harpoon while they club him across the nose or head. 

301 



AFTER THE SEAL 

In summer the hunters have a wider field, and pursue 
their game in a manner that more nearly approaches 
genuine fishing. In the deep bays and gulfs of the Green- 
land coast, hundreds and thousands of seals may then be 
seen disporting themselves. These are principally the 
kind known as the Atak, or Greenland seal, distinguish- 
able by their short, wiry hair that has nothing of the semi- 
woolliness of the common seal about it ; it is a great deal 
larger than most of its brethren, often measuring from 
six to eight feet in length. 

The natives, seated in their kayaks, take up a position 
among the floating ice-blocks, to which the animals will 
sometimes flee on seeing the boats. If possible they will 
try to take the seals by surprise, drifting silently in 
pursuit of single individuals. Arrived within about 
twenty feet of one of them, the hunter sits holding an 
oar in his left hand and a harpoon in his right ; to this 
harpoon is attached a bladdered line, the same thing on a 
smaller scale as that used by the Eskimos in whaling. 
Keeping the buoyed end of the line between his knees or 
feet, he throws the harpoon ; and, if it finds a good mark, 
he tosses the bladder into the water. Generally the seal 
dives, taking the bladder with it, but only for a moment ; 
weakened by pain and loss of blood, it is less able than 
usual to hold its breath, and soon comes to the surface 
again, when the nearest Eskimo gives it the coup de grace 
with a stick or lance. After a while the sea becomes 
dotted all over with bladders, and fishing ceases for the 
day ; the lines are collected and joined up in lots which 
are equally divided among the kayaks, and towed ashore. 

302 



AND THE AVALIIUS 

Another large animal of this neighbourhood is the 
Capuchin or hooded seal, eight feet long, and possessed 
of a peculiar hood-like organ above its head which it can 
bring down at will over its nose. Its bite is as undesirable 
as that of a mastiff, and it barks remarkably like one ; 
varying the bark by a long, wailing whine when attacked. 
It will come further south than the Greenland seal, and is 
pursued by the North American sealers as well as by the 
Eskimos. Most of the skins sold in England come from 
this animal. Another peculiarity that it has is the power 
of distending its nostrils when diving, till they look like 
two great bladders or pouches ; and it can remain under 
water longer than the other varieties. The Capuchin 
must not be confused with the Monk-seal, or pelagius ; 
this inhabits the coasts of Sardinia and the Adriatic, 
and is said to be the special phocaena whose skin the 
Romans regarded as a protection against a lightning- 
stroke ; Augustus Caesar is supposed to have carried such 
a skin with him wherever he went. 

The Russians, though insignificant in a general way as 
fishermen, are clever and energetic sealers, but they cling 
for the most part to old-fashioned methods. In pursuing 
the Greenland seal they build high wooden towers, from 
which watchmen posted there can tell the numbers and 
movements of a body of seals ; and the fishermen act 
"upon information received." Dragging small boats 
over the ice, they pursue the seals to the water ; though 
many hunters prefer to dress themselves in long white 
smock-frocks which will prevent their being distinguished 
from the background of snow, and enable them to shoot 

303 



AFTER THE SEAL 

or spear the animals almost at leisure. This practice is 
probably copied from the Eskimos, who even used to go 
the length of sewing themselves in sealskins and, at the 
risk of being torn to pieces, crawl among a herd and kill 
as many as possible with their bow and arrows. 

Sealing among the British, American, Dutch, Scandi- 
navian, and Japanese fleets is a most important industry, 
and is carried on as systematically — if not as profitably 
and with as much risk — as whaling. Good-sized ships 
of 300 tons and over are fitted out for the work, each 
carrying oil-tanks, boilers, etc. British Columbia alone 
owns several fleets of such ships. The means of catching 
depends on the neighbourhood, time of year, etc. For 
open-sea work, harpooning or shooting from small boats 
is the surest ; and, where the fishermen are active and 
industrious, two men can often garner a boat-load in a 
few hours. In spring, this method is terribly dangerous 
in the northern regions, for the ice is breaking up, and 
huge hummocks of it are floating about ; the sea is rough 
or choppy by reason of the melted snow torrents that are 
everywhere emptying themselves into it, and the weather 
is still bitterly cold. 

The greatest peril is from the floating ice ; an oarsman 
who knows his way about, can easily dodge a single block 
that is making for him ; but let him get into a current 
among a couple of dozen — perhaps a couple of hundred — 
of such blocks, which are cheerfully jostling and clashing 
together ! I am not quoting an isolated or out-of-the-way 
case ; such a position exists only too frequently, and the 
annual list of casualties that arise in this manner is an 

3°4 



AND THE WALRUS 

alarming one. In avoiding one ice-lump the boat perhaps 
pulls between two others ; if she is going with the current, 
well and good ; she is through before the blocks can 
possibly meet ; but often the current is awry and broken, 
and as she passes between the hummocks she finds herself 
penned right and left by ice, and in front by a force of 
water that she can ill battle against ; the hummocks bear 
down upon her and she is cracked like a nut. If possible 
the crew will scramble on to one or other of the blocks 
and it may be well with them ; but the hummock may 
float away, carrying them out of reach of their com- 
panions, to be eventually drowned or starved. 

Round about the Baltic, and in parts of North 
America, and sometimes in Scotland, the breeding season 
among the animals is taken advantage of by the fisher- 
men, for then the seals are on land and can, with care, be 
taken a whole colony at a time, and shot or clubbed. 
The seal, be it remembered, is one of the most intelligent 
beings in existence, and all its acts and movements are 
undertaken with method and system. In summer the 
males, or bulls, come ashore and seek out convenient 
homes for the females ; these will not arrive till nearly a 
month later. The bulls which come first naturally are 
able to choose the best positions — in caves, if possible ; 
if not, in well-sheltered spots among the rocks. Late 
comers must take their chance ; they will try to take 
someone else's pitch, and a fight, sometimes to the 
death, will be the result. Even the fighting is done on 
systematic lines. Two bulls approach each other, each one 
pretending to be interested in something that is going on 
u 305 



AFTER THE SEAL 

elsewhere ; as they come together, one will make a feint 
with teeth or nails, dodge, and roll behind the enemy, 
hoping to take him from the rear. After a good deal of 
such fencing, one will fix the other by the " scruff" of the 
neck, driving his teeth through skin and blubber, and 
gripping so that only immense force can dislodge him ; 
and when the teeth are wrenched away, they carry off a 
good deal of skin and fat with them. 

When the females come ashore the fighting will have 
to begin all over again, for each bull means to possess as 
large a harem as possible. He goes down to the water- 
edge, courteously conducts the lady of his choice up the 
beach to his home, and leaves her there while he goes in 
search of more wives. While he is gone another bull will 
come, take the bewildered cow by the neck, and drag her 
gently to his own home ; this, of course, means a sub- 
sequent fight. Meanwhile, the females at the water-line 
have become bones of contention, and each bull's strength 
and ingenuity must be exerted to the full before he can 
carry off and keep his various wives. The size of the 
harems depends on the fighting powers of the husbands ; 
one will have five females, another thirty-five. Sometimes 
one cave will contain nearly a hundred families of ten, and 
in such caves the young are brought forth and suckled. 

The sealers choose night time for a descent on one of 
these colonies, for by day the bulls are too wary ; even at 
night they make some attempt at posting sentries, in 
imitation of the walruses. Putting off from their ship in 
small boats, the fishermen, each carrying a stout pole shod 
with iron, and an unlighted torch, creep silently to the 

306 



AND THE WALRUS 

nearest cave, and on entering, every man seeks out a place 
where he can press himself as close to the rock wall as 
possible. Suddenly someone strikes a match; this is a 
signal, and everyone lights his torch and starts shouting. 
The wretched animals, thus taken by surprise, huddle 
together or rush for the entrance ; and now is seen the 
wisdom of each man having packed himself in as small a 
compass as possible, for the stampede is sometimes terrific, 
and anyone who attempted to stem it would be trodden 
down and crushed to death, if not torn in pieces by the 
infuriated bulls. 

The first rush is allowed to pass unchecked, but when 
it is over, the massacre of those that have stayed behind 
commences ; and in this way an enormous pile of carcasses 
is soon stacked up on the shore, ready to be taken aboard 
or to be cut up on the beach. 

As a rule the skins are removed there and then, and 
with them the thick blubber-coat which adheres. The 
depth of this coat may be anything up to four inches; 
that taken from the young seal is the best and most 
plentiful, for a very interesting reason. 

While the bulls have been settling about their future 
homes, watching them and their families night and day, 
what time have they had for obtaining food ? Seals live 
on fish, and cannot, or will not, eat anything else ; and 
for two or three months the whole colony, or " rookery , w 
has been away from the chance of fishing. During all 
that time the adults have sustained life by absorbing the 
fat with which their bodies are so liberally supplied. 

The skin and blubber thus obtained is made into 

307 



AFTER THE SEAL 

bundles and taken aboard, though many fleets set up 
their furnaces on the beach and boil the carcasses as well, 
for these yield a surprising quantity of oil. 

When the ships reach their own ports the blubber 
is separated from the hides ; the latter are dried and 
salted for export to England and the States, where they 
will be converted into leather, while the blubber is 
crushed by machinery, steamed, exposed in open tanks to 
the air and sun, and finally put into barrels. 

Between Cape Horn and the Tropic of Capricorn are 
various other kinds of seals. One of them, the narrow- 
snout, more nearly approaches a fish form than any other, 
for its claws are small and drawn together, so that they 
look like the serrated edge of a fin. The roaring noise 
made by this variety during the night has often deluded 
sailors into the belief that it proceeded from the bellowing 
of cattle on shore. 

To the fishermen there are but two classes of seals, 
haired and furred. Under the first head come all those 
that are pursued for the sake of their fat and their hide ; 
under the second, those whose thick growth of velvety 
under-hair makes the animals one of the most valuable 
captures that the sea has to offer. True, the fur seal has 
plenty of oil of its own, but it is of so rank a nature that 
it is seldom thought worth while to go to the expense of 
clarifying and cleansing it. 

The best fur-yielders are the seals from round Cape 
Horn and those found in the Behring Sea ; several 
millions of the latter haunt the Alaska coast during the 
season. Yet, in spite of such apparent abundance, the 

308 



AND THE WALRUS 

fishermen observe the greatest care as to what animals 
they destroy. The invariable rule nowadays is, kill no 
females. There need be no difficulty in keeping to this 
regulation, for size is the predominant distinguishing 
feature between the sexes ; whereas a well-grown bull-seal 
will be seven or eight feet long, the cows rarely reach 
more than four feet. 

The skin is at its best when the young male has 
reached nearly the age of three years. As soon as the 
animals are killed the skin is removed, separated from the 
fat and well coated with salt. A sealskin that has been 
newly removed would be almost unrecognisable to those 
who have only seen the article when worked up into a 
lady's jacket. Apparently it is a mere rough mat of 
coarse, long hair. If, however, the coat be closely 
examined it will be seen that the hair is simply an outer 
covering to a thick mat of soft fur. 

To get rid of the long hairs is easier than would appear, 
for the roots penetrate far more deeply than those of the 
under hair. Therefore it suffices to peel or scrape the 
inside of the skin with sharp knives till the roots are cut 
free and the long hairs come away like separate threads. 

The skins thus prepared are shipped to London or New 
York for final treatment. Their value varies according to 
size and fineness ; some are worth a sovereign, others as 
much as five pounds. Recently South Africa has gone in 
largely for sealing, and several thousands of skins taken 
in the Indian Ocean are sent from Cape Town to London 
every year. 

Three other important members of the family are the 

309 



AFTER THE SEAL 

sea-elephant, the sea-lion, and the sea-bear, all pursued 
whenever it is possible, for the sake of their skin and fat. 
These have an external ear and are otherwise distinguished 
from the true seals by the formation of their limbs and 
teeth. The sea-elephant — or elephant-seal, as the fisher- 
men call it — reaches a length of twenty-five feet and 
more, and the males have a prolongation of the muzzle 
which has some resemblance to a trunk. It is to be 
found principally off the southern shores of South 
America, but it has no objection to fresh water, and 
large specimens have been shot in the rivers or on the 
marshy banks or pools some distance inland. The people 
of the Argentine regard the tongue of the animal, dried 
and salted, as a very great delicacy, though the rest of the 
flesh is uneatable. A great many elephant-seals are har- 
pooned by the Antarctic whalers in the outward or home- 
ward course of the ship ; the oil is more valuable than 
that from the whale, and the skin, though useless as " seal- 
skin, 1 ' is tanned for carriage-covers, etc. 

The sea-lion is less terrible than its name suggests, and 
like other seals, will only bite in self-defence. It gets its 
name on account of the thick mane which covers its head 
and shoulders, and perhaps by reason of its generally 
savage appearance and loud, lion-like bellow. Those of 
the south — Chili and Patagonia — are generally snapped 
up by the whalers for the sake of their oil ; but the 
northern lions — those from Kamchatka, the Aleutian, and 
the Kurile Islands generally — become, with the seals of 
that neighbourhood, the property of the Japanese sealing- 
boats, large steam-craft built on European lines. 

310 



AND THE WALRUS 

The sea-bear, a kind of fur-seal, is very valuable, and is 
rapidly becoming extinct; its fur is of a pale brown, almost 
yellowish tint, and this used to be exported from North 
China in great quantities. Some years ago, however, the 
Russians contrived to get the greater part of the trade 
away from the Chinese, and they have pursued the animals 
so ruthlessly that they have left none for anyone else. 

The establishment of a close season for sealing has 
happily now put a stop to the wholesale destruction 
of such valuable animals. By agreement among the ship- 
owners, almost the whole of the seal-fishery is at present 
confined to the early spring. 

The walrus, morse, sea-horse, or whale-horse, is easily 
distinguished from the other pinnipeds by its two upper 
canine teeth which, projecting downwards, form two 
powerful tusks ; in length it is about thirteen feet ; in 
shape very much like a seal ; in colour from tawny to 
dark red. It is only found in the northern seas — round 
Kamchatka is a favourite locality — and it is hunted by 
the natives or by the big sealing-fleets for the sake of its 
somewhat scanty though exceedingly pure oil, and of its 
tusks, which are from fifteen to thirty inches long, and 
are of the finest and hardest ivory. 

The use of the tusks is not primarily as a weapon, but 
as a means of progress. In climbing an ice-floe the 
walrus digs the points in the surface of the ice and easily 
drags himself from spot to spot. 

The skin is tanned and used in various manufactures, or 
is cut up into thongs which are absolutely unbreakable ; 

3" 



AFTER THE SEAL 

the flesh is boiled down for oil, and the tusks come away 
uninjured when the head is immersed in boiling water. 

On land the animal is far more awkward in its move- 
ments than the seal, though just as active in the water. It 
can remain a long while below the surface, having, like all 
the other pinnipeds, special reservoirs into which the over- 
strained veins can discharge the blood which would other- 
wise suffocate them when breathing was suspended for any 
length of time. A fisherman can distinguish a walrus 
from a seal at a great distance by its manner of diving ; 
whereas a seal sinks as naturally as a whale, a walrus 
heaves up its back, rolls forward, and then disappears. 

The walrus is almost a vegetarian ; its throat is so 
small that it could not even swallow a herring, and it lives 
on seaweed, which it ekes out with molluscs scraped from 
the rocks or burrowed out of the sand with its tusks. It 
is of milder disposition than the seal, though a terrible 
enough opponent when forced to fight for its life. Its 
great enemy is the Polar bear, and in the fights between 
the two animals the bear does not always win ; more often 
than not a bear that has been indiscreet enough to pick a 
quarrel with a walrus is soon glad to retire, gored and 
torn and bleeding. To guard against a surprise visit 
from its foe, the intelligent sea-horse places sentinels 
which give the alarm by loud signal roars, at the first 
sound of which the walruses all scuttle off to the water. 
While on the land or on the ice they are generally careful 
never to rest far from the water-line. 

As a profitable occupation, walrus-catching is not what 
it used to be ; two hundred years ago a few English 

312 



AND THE WALRUS 

sealers slaughtered eight hundred of them in six hours. 
Such a thing could scarcely happen nowadays, for past 
experience has given the animals a horror of ships and 
men, except when feelings of revenge are aroused in them ; 
and they seem to be steadily migrating further and 
further north. Moreover, on landing, their instinct 
inclines them to rocks and ice-floes which are inaccessible 
to men and often to bears. 

Nevertheless, the Japanese, American, and English 
fleets score a pretty good total among them in the course 
of a year, both land and water hunting. The procedure 
is much the same as in sealing, except that the vigilance 
and unity of the bands make the task more difficult and 
uncertain. The only very successful way of killing 
walruses on shore is for the crews to sneak in as quietly as 
possible, and shoot the sentries before they can give the 
alarm ; then to spring ashore and line up between the 
water and the herd. On shore the animals are unable to 
harm any persecutor who can keep them at arm's length, 
and the whole colony soon fall victims to the axes and 
pikes of the fishermen. 

In the water the case is altered, and the risk is so great 
that many seasoned whalers and sealers will have nothing 
to do with such work. The instinct of the herds tells 
them when the odds are against or in favour of them ; if 
they are strong in numbers, and there is but one boat, the 
men will do well to content themselves with what they 
can kill by firing at long range. Even then a herd will 
often follow a boat for miles. 

When several boats are attacking, the walruses swim 

3i3 



AFTER THE SEAL AND WALRUS 

away, but they can often be " cornered " on account of 
their refusal to land when pursued. Then when they find 
themselves hemmed between boats and shore they make 
a united dash for the nearest boat, and the fight is 
generally a lively one. Some of the heavy tusks hook 
themselves over the gunwale, and the boat is held 
prisoner, while others of the herd puncture the timbers 
and try to tear the vessel in pieces or drag it under ; and 
it is not till rifle and axe have been plied unceasingly that 
the men can regard their lives as their own. 

This is but another example of the dangers and hard- 
ships which are part of the fisherman's lot. Whether 
he is in pursuit of walrus or whale, codfish or herring, his 
calling is a perilous one ; and what he adds by his industry 
to the wealth of his country is too often won at the risk 
of his own life. 



3H 



INDEX 



Adriatic : oysters, 122 ; sponge- 
harpooning, 261 ; fisheries, 

.147. ISO 
Africa : river fishing, 211, 212 
Air-pump for clivers, 256 
Albicore or horse-mackerel, 1 53 
Amber, 19, 147 
Ambergris, 249 
American fishermen, 25, 29, 

124, 125 
Anchovy, 148-150 
Andalusian fisheries, 148, 149, 

153 
Angling, 23 ; salmon, 73-82 ; 

tarpon, 82-87 5 among the 

Chinese, 180, 181 
Annam, 179, 180, 187 
Antarctic whaling, 233, 245 
Arab pearl-divers, 221 
Arapaima, 205-207 
Arcachon, 112, 122, 123 
"Archer," 187 
Arctic : fisheries, 217; whaling, 

245-249 
"Argentine,'' 230 
Armado, 207, 208 
Arrows, 206, 289 
Artificial breeding : fish, 70, 148 ; 

oysters, 121 : sponge, 262 
Asiatic fisheries, 179-190, 212- 

215 
Australia: fisheries, 216; oysters, 

122 ; pearls and pearl-shells, 

230 
Austrian fishing-fleet, 147 

Bahamas, 262 



Bait, 23, 26, 27, 52, 55, 129; 
salmon, 75, 81 ; tarpon, 84 ; 
cod, 94, 106 ; lobster, 168 ; 
crab, 173 

Barge, 52, 53 

Beluga, 277-279 

" Bending-on,'' 55 

Bergen, 60, 168-170 

Biscayan fishermen, 20, 233 

Blue-fish, 124 

Boar-fish, 151 

Board of Trade, 20, 193 

Boats, 24 

Bomb-lance, 246 

Breton fishermen, 89, 99 ; em- 
barkation of, 91 

" Brisse," 20 

British Columbian salmon-fleet, 
66 

Brittany, 27, 89, 148 

Brixham, 41 ; trawlers, 33 

"Brood/' 112 

Brood-getting, 1 12-122 

Brown's Bank, 10 1 

Bulters, 58, 174 

Caaing whale, 277, 278 

Cachalot, 244 

Cape Hatteras mackerel-ground, 

126 
Canadian fisheries, 20; salmon, 

66 
Casting-line for salmon, 74, 76 
Catching fish on land, 208 
Catching turtles with fish, 287- 

289 
Caviare, 166 



315 



INDEX 



Ceylon pearl-fishing, 221-229; 

dugongs, 280 
China : fisheries, 186 ; river- 
fishing, 180-186 
Christianasund lobster -fishery, 

168-170 
Cleaning fish, 28, 57, 67, 97, 

107 
Close time, 21 ; salmon, 71, 73 ; 

oysters, 112; seals, 311 
Cod : Iceland, 88-99 ; American, 

1 00-110 
" Cold Wall " current, 103 
Collecting-boats or carriers, 107, 

121, 127, 130, 146, 202 
Colony of seals, 305-307 
Columbia river, 62, 64, 66 
Congers, 54, 194, 195 
Coral, 19, 147 
Cormorants, 182-185 
Cornish fishermen, 156, 173 
Cowries, 19 
Crabbing, 24, 173, *74 
Crabs, 46, 119, 170-173; fresh 

water, 173 ; land, 172, 173 
"Cran," 145 
Cray-fish, 170 
Creels, 55 

Currents, 28, 103, 168, 194, 222 
Cutter-rigged smacks, 25, 41, 

113, 193 
Cuttle-fish, 26, 210 

Dabs, 47 

Dangers of the fisherman's call- 
ing, 28, 29, 33, 49; 9°, 98, 101, 
103, 156,237,304, 305, 314 

Danish cod crews, 89 

Diodon, 209, 210 

Dip-nets, 185, 189, 211 

Divers: pearl, 221-227; sponge, 
251-259; turtle, 290; of 
Tierra del Fuego, 211 

Dogger Bank, 33, 37, 54 

Dog-whelk, 117, 219 

Dolphin, 265-268 

Dory work, 102-106 



Dragonet, 150 

Dredge, 27, 114 

Dredging: oysters, 1 13-12 1 ; 
mussels, 52; sponges, 259- 
260 

Drift-nets, 26, 137-144 

Drum-fish, 212 

Dugong, 280, 281 

Dutch : fishing-boat, 43 ; fisher- 
men, 43 ; Banks, 39 ; oyster- 
beds, 122 ; whaling, 233 

East Coast fishermen, 33 

East Indies, 172, 204, 220, 289 

Eels, 200, 201 

Egypt, 204, 211 

Eskimos : fishing, 217 ; sealing, 

299-302 ; whaling, 232 
Essex shrimpers, 42 
Experience, 27, 28 

Faroe Islands, 92, 268 

Fighting-fish, 187 

Finns, 69, 70 

Fishermen, 27-29 ; attitude to- 
wards strangers, 32, 33, 176 

Fish-wheel, 65 

11 Five-fingers," 56, 117 

" Fleet" of nets, 26, 140, 161 

Florida, 130 ; Keys, 262 ; sponge, 
262-264 

Fly-crabs, 46 

Flying-fish, 83, 86, 87, 210, 214 

Fox-fish, 47 

Fox-shark, 243 

Fraser River, 60-62 

French fishermen, 100, 104, 105, 

125, 155 
French trawling, 101, 104, 105 
"Fry": oyster, 112; salmon, 

62 

Gaffing salmon, 80 
Galapagos tortoise, 294-5 
Galilee (Sea of), 151 ; fishing, 
213 



316 



INDEX 



Ganges, 150, 269 

Garum, 150 

Gear, 25-27 

Gentles, 23 

Gill-net, 102, 107-110, 129 

Grampus, 270 

Grand Banks, 20, 100-110 

Greek sponge divers, 251-259 

Greenland, 20 ; whale, 245 

Greenlanders, 272, 277, 279 

" Greenlanders' whale," 278 

Grilse, 62, 78 

Grimsby, 39, 41, 124, 146, 191 

Gulf of Manaar, 221-225 

Gulf of Mexico, 82,83, 125, 131, 

287 
Gulf Stream, 83 

Haddock, 25, 36, 56, 151 
Hag-fish, 56 
Hake, 194, 199 
Halibut, 56, 194, 199 
Hardanger Fjord, 68 
Harpoon, 153, 235-242 
Harpoon-gun, 246 
Harpooning : fish, 205 ; sponge, 

260 ; whales, 235-242 
Hatch-boats, 58, 132 
Hawaiian outriggers, 216 
Hawk's-bill turtle, 291 
Herring, 19, 129, 130, 133-146 
Herring fishery : American, 1 29, 

130; Norwegian, 146; British, 

I33-U5 
Historical notes, 20, 59, 60, 125, 

220, 232, 233, 266, 272 
Hooks, 19, 23, 54-56, 105 
Hooking for sponge, 263 
Horn-mussel, 50 
Horse-power for nets, 65, 150, 

154 

Iceland, 93 ; cod, 93-98 ; nar- 
whal-hunting, 272, 277 

Indian Ocean, 187, 210, 252, 
291 

Indians spearing salmon, 66 



Inia, 269 

Irish fisheries, 41, 147, 191-202 

Irish fishermen, 193; salmon- 
fishing, 74-80 

Isinglass, 166, 213 

"Islandais," 98, 102 

Italian fisheries, 148 

Ivory : narwhal, 275 ; walrus, 
3il 

Japan: fisheries, 188-190; seal- 
ing, 304 
"John Dory," 151 
Jotunfeld, 68, 81 
Jumping salmon, 60, 61, 66, 81 
Junks, 186, 188 

Keeling Island, 172 
Kent Flats, 112 
Kentish fishermen, 29, 113 
Kuro shiwo current, 66 

Labrador current, 103 

Lapps, 69 

"Last," 145 

Law as to salmon, 70, 71 ; crabs, 

174 
Levant, 152, 251 
Life on board a smack, 34, 35, 

91-97 
Lines and line-fishing, 25, 53- 

53, 155 

Ling, 199 

Lobsters : Colonial, 168 ; Nor- 
wegian, 168 ; pots, 167-168 

Lorcha, 186 

Lowestoft, 33, 124, 191 

Luggers, 24, 134, 193 

Lug-sail, 24, 176, 186 

Lythe, 136, 137 

Mackerel, 124 

"Mackerel guide," or gar-fish, 

195 
Magna Charta, 20, 70 
Maigre, 151 



317 



INDEX 



Malacca, 179 

Malay: fishermen, 173; pirates, 
186, 215 

Manatee, 281-283 

Manatidae, 280 

Mango-fish, 213 

Man overboard, 198 

Massacre of seals, 309 

"Maze," or "Mease/' 145 

Mediterranean: fish, 148-155; 
sponge, 251-263 

Menhaden, 132 

"Mermaid's Glove," 251 

Migration : anchovy, 148 ; mac- 
kerel, 127 ; salmon, 60-62 

Moored-nets, 27, 63, 66, 69, 72, 
107, no, 150 

Mother-of-pearl. See Nacre 

Mullet, 130, 150 

Murex, 19 

Mussel, 50-53 ; fresh-water, 220; 
pearl, 230 

Nacre, 218-219, 230 

Narwhal, 272-277 

Natural salmon-traps, 63, 68 

Nets. See Moored -net, Drift- 
net, etc. 

Newfoundland, 100, 107, 278 

Nile, 21 1-2 1 2 

Norway, 67, 81, 168 

Norwegian : salmon-fishing, 67- 
69, 81, 82 ; whalers, 92, 234, 
245 

Oil : cod, 88 ; dugong, 280 ; 
seal, 299 ; porpoise, 272 ; 
shark, 152; sturgeon, 166; 
whale, 245, 249 

Oyster, 19, m-123; beds, 121, 
123; pearl, 220, 221; varie- 
ties, 122 

" Oyster-catcher," 123 

Oyster-catching, 122 

Packing pilchards, 163 
Pearls : fixed, 228 ; loose, 229 



Phosphorescent track of fish, 

127, 136, 140 
Pilchard, 148, 156-164 
Pilchard-seine, 158-162 
Pilot-fish, 152 
Pinna, 155 
Pinnipeds, 297-314 
Piracy, 104 

Porpoises, 135, 215, 270-272 
Portuguese fishermen, 20, 125, 

186 
Pots, 27, 167; crab, 173, 174; 

lobster, 170; whelk, 177 
Prawns, 50 

Private grounds, 71, 121 
Proas, 215 
Puget Sound, 62, 63 
Purse-seines, 126, 127 
Push-nets, 23, 42 

Queen Charlotte Sound, 63 
Queensland, 168 

Rafts, 24, 180-185 

Ray, 200 

" Red snappers," 131 

Registration of nets, 70, 158 

Remarkable hauls, J7, 127 

Remora, 287-289 

Re-stocking oyster-beds, 113, 

122 
Rod-and-line fishing, 23, 73-87 
Rorqual, 243 
Russian sturgeon-fishing, 164- 

166 ; sealing, 303 

St. Ives, 156-158 

St. Peter and the tribute money, 

Sampan, 188 
Sardines, 148, 163 
Saw-fish, 152 

Scandinavian fishermen, 29, 67 
School of whales, 237 
Schooners, 25, 101 
Scotch fisheries, 33, 52, 134 ; 
salmon, 71 



3i8 



INDEX 



Sea-bear , 31 1 

Sea-cat, 196 

Sea-cow, 281 

Sea-elephant, 310 

Sea-horse, 271, 311 

Sea-lion, 310 

Sea-mouse, 119 

Sea products, 19 

Sea-serpent, 214 

Sea-spider, 119 

Sea-swallow, 69 

Sea-urchin, 118, 119 

Seals, 297-3 11 

Sealing, 189, 304-311 

Seasons for fish : cod, 89 ; 

mackerel, 125; salmon, 74; 

shrimps, 43; herring, 133; 

lobster, 169; mullet, 130; 

pilchard, 157 
Seines, 26, 64, 68, 71, 148, 149, 

279 
Seine-boat, 158 
Sharks, 124, 127 ; skin, 152 ; 

oil, 152 ; teeth, 19 
Shark-charmers of Ceylon, 226 
Shrimps, 23, 42, 44, 50 ; boil- 
ing, 48, 49 ; opossom-shrimp, 

217 
Shrimping, 42-49 
Shoals: herring, 135; mackerel, 

126 ; pilchard, 157 
Shore-weirs, 124, 128 
Siam, 180, 187 
Sicilian fisheries, 153, 154 
Signalling the shoals, 158 
Signs of a shoal, 133, 149, 153, 

157 
Skate, 19, 200 
Skins, 196 

Slaughtering tunny-fish, 154 
Smacks, 25, 33 
Smolt, 62 

Snapper turtle, 286 
Sogne Fjord, 68 
Soles, 19, 56, 117, 193 
Soosoo, 269 
South African fisheries, 168, 309 * 



South American fisheries, 204- 
211 

South Sea Islands, 215 

Spain, 122, 148 

Spawn : salmon, 61 ; cod, 89 ; 
oyster, 112 ; whelk, 175 

Spawning time : cod, 107 ; sal- 
mon, 60-62; oyster, 112; 
mackerel, 130; tunny, 1 53 5 
pilchard, 157; sturgeon, 164 

Spearing: fish, 205, 212; nar- 
whals, 274 ; turtles, 289 

Sperm whale. See Cachalot 

Sperm oil, 249 

Spermaceti, 249 

Spitzbergeu, 20, 233 

Sponge: diving, 251-258 ; hook- 
ing, 263 ; dredging, 259 

Spy -glass for sponge fishing, 
260 

Squid. See Cuttle-fish 

Stake-nets, 71 

Steam-trawling, 40 

Sterlet, 165 

Stop-seines, 159 

Stow-nets, 72 

Stromo : dolphin -hunting in, 
268 

Sturgeon, 20, 164-166 

Sucking-fish. See Remora 

"Sulking" salmon, 79 

Superstitions among the fisher- 
men, 104, 118, 119 

Sweep-nets, 71 

Sword-fish, 152 

Tackle: salmon, 74, 75; tarpon, 

84 
Tarpon, 82-87 
Taxing of salmon-nets, 72 
Terrapin, 286 
Testudinata, 285 
Thunder-fish, 211 
Tierra del Fuego, 210 
Torpedo or electric ray, 155 
Tortoises, 285 
Tory Island, 202 



319 



INDEX 



Transplanting: "brood," 113, 

122 ; mussels, 52 
Traps : beluga, 279 ; eel, 201 
Trap-nets, 69 
Trawls, 26, 34 

Trawling, 30-41 ; Irish, 194-199 
Tropics, 83, 308 
"Trots," 174 
" Tucking," 162 
Tunny, 153-155 
Turbot, 19 
Turtle, 147, 284-296 
Typboid from oysters, 123 
Tyrian purple, 19 

United States, 20 ; fish, 132 ; 
fishermen, 29, 104, 124, 125 ; 
fishing stations, 1 24 ; fisheries, 
124-132 ; treaty, 21 



Walrus, 311 ; hunting, 311- 

314 
"Wash," 120 
Whales, 231, 232 
Whaling, 234-249 
Whalebone, 243 
Whelks, 174-178; red, 123, 

178 
Whelk tingles, 123 
Whelk-boats, 176 
Whiting, 47 
Wind, 84, 222 

Xebecs, 149 

Yarmouth, 33, 191 
Yawls or yawl-rigged smacks, 
24. 33, 9i 



WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD. 
PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH 



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